> I don't intend this to be directed at you, but it's a standing joke among traditionalist Catholics that "I was raised Catholic" is the preamble to a statement of either ignorance or heresy.

It's cool, no offence taken.

My mother took it all very seriously, but she was also syncretic New Age/Hindu/Catholic; she got me baptised at birth and took the lead with Sunday school and going to Church etc, my dad was mainly interested in getting me into a good school that was Catholic but himself was atheist.

I actually read the entire New Testament while at school, took it at face value, thought "this doesn't work, does it?" and went to Wicca for a bit before deciding that wasn't for me either.

I think at no point did anyone bother to explain the structure of the Catholic church, they just kinda assumed we all knew it, when what we knew was from pop culture. I think your local priest was unavoidable knowledge, but pop culture gave me bishops, the Pope (but not the fact that his official title isn't that until it came up on the quiz show QI), and the obvious joke about Cardinal Jaime Sin. The actual education gave me no sense of ranks or the organisation or how nuns and monks fit in — just the same five bible tales (birth, walking on water, feeding of 5000, eye of the needle, death and resurrection) over and over again. With singing.

The pattern you've noticed, I think also applies to the UK citizenship test: there's a general sense that most people born with UK nationality wouldn't be able to pass the test to become a citizen as an adult.