I believe that it all comes down to "Love". That's the key. All other "rules" are mostly human-made. Your relationship with God is just that: a relationship between you and God. And that's YOUR business and God's!

I too was raised a Catholic, but there are many places where priests are not as good as they should be.

I think I'm lucky on that, that I had a good priest for the biggest part of my life. I developed interest in finding out more and, for the most part, most lay people's common knowledge is wrong.

God does not want you locked up in a bunch of rules. God (even being apparently very absent) wants you to be happy thru Love. And that's all! (and, funny enough, the catholic church does defend that! It's just very sad they miss by a lot to put that into practice - but, then again, they are humans as well...).