Woah, kid, I was raised catholic. [.....................................] I still attend mass - nobody in my family has mistreated or abandoned me like a cult.
Well if you refer to your "Catholic family" as in the Roman Church then you will know that while the Church may not be abandoning you, there are many thousands abandoning the RCC in their droves by the year. You say yourself that you have "partially" deserted. Even Cardinal Reinhard Marx -to mention just one- has said that the Roman Church "has reached a dead end".
No doubt this will be because people have been much better educated over the last 150 years and able to read these ambiguous half stories that make up scripture for themselves.
Maybe it was a case of Cardinal Reinhard and others waking up to the fact that you can only fool some people for so long.
I read my bible every day and believe all these tenets:
* God is real and he created the world in 6 days, and rested on the 7th
* Christ is the son of God
* Christ was born of a virgin
* Christ died for our sins
* Christ came back to life 3 days later
* The bible is the word of God
* God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent
* Salvation through faith alone
* God will judge my afterlife
More fool you, and all of the above are easily debunked and or unprovable.
The RC Church has no chance of climbing from its decline or climbing out from the hole it dug for itself 2000 years ago. The New Testament is built on many lies, some intended and others not. And the RC Church has known this from day one of it's conception, as have all Christian Churches.
"The myth of Christ has served us well", comes to mind.