""The same goes for churches. You don't have to agree with everything in a given church to stay associated with it. You don't have to agree with every point of its dogma.""

Ah, but the point is that I have looked around and reached a few conclusions, which are:-

1. The Catholic Church didn't want me unless I blithely accepted all its teachings and the same applied to others who were questioning.

When I ask a question, it's because I genuinely want to know the answer, and there were damn few of those, but more than a sufficiency of punishments for not having sufficient faith.

I know there are good people in the Catholic Church I'm not stupid, but, with notable exceptions, they tend to be the ones who can swallow the blurb whole, and get on with being good.

2. I looked at other Churches and absent the pomp and panoply, didn't see sufficient difference.

3. I had always known that I could pray anywhere, so concluded not only that I didn't need a church or a preacher, but that God didn't either.

Q.E.D.

Don T.