In response to your first paragraph: I was raised Catholic, and for a long time I’ve been a little bit envious of my Jewish friends’ ability to still associate themselves with their religious identity even after they no longer identify with the theistic elements of it. “If you leave you’ll burn in hell for eternity” was effective for a long time, and it worked on me for much of my childhood, but it doesn’t seem like a very effective retention strategy at this point.
Of course, I don’t really care to associate with most Catholics as they stand today anyway. But that might be different if Catholics and “I was raised Catholic”s had a more formal shared identity in the same sense that religious and secular Jews do.
Of course, I don’t really care to associate with most Catholics as they stand today anyway. But that might be different if Catholics and “I was raised Catholic”s had a more formal shared identity in the same sense that religious and secular Jews do.