He taught you the value of skepticism for sure. I was raised Catholic and my family was involved in church culture but we grew up on Carl Sagan and Nova so my siblings and I got a healthy dose of skepticism for catechism. The original sin ..... we are made imperfect and punished for being made that way by the maker. Sounds legit.

I was raised as a catholic, went to a catholic school, catechism, and had a father that was as catholic as you can get without actually being in the clergy. He even once tried to tell me that HE was going to go to hell because I left the church.

In my catholic education it started to occur to me that a lot of the teachings of the church were, in essence, a shakedown of ignorant people with little control over their own lives. The concept of original sin - essentially that it is a sin just to be born and that only the church can save you from the eternal torment of hell, was to get people to be baptised and to get money from them. The concept of purgatory was so that people would sacrifice and give to the church (the selling of "indulgences" ). Even the oath of celibacy taken by the clergy is just so that the church does not have to support the families of priests and nuns.

Perhaps I am too much of a cynic, but the whole thing just seemed to be some kind of spiritual "protection racket". "Hey, that's a nice soul you got there. It would be a shame if something should happen to it, you know what I mean?"

Here here fellow ex-catholic

If your dad is still around then give him a big hug and hats off to him for being cool