Both my parents were to some extent religious Mum was Protestant (Lutheran) and Dad was Catholic, although Mum converted at some point, possibly when she married Dad – they had to leave Malaysia as they’d got disowned by both their families due to not having their arranged marriages.
I was initially sent to religious junior schools but they were no more full on than the secular ones about Christianity in the 1970s; we weren’t even expected to read an entire Bible as it was difficult and full of violence and scary bits – real life back then was bad enough. Modern European Catholic teaching (post Vatican II) is a lot more progressive particularly outside the English speaking countries. The “God squad” get a bad name due to a combination of more traditionalist Catholics (which infest the Anglosphere much more than elsewhere) + evangelist Protestants (the born again lot); those are the sorts who say you will go to Hell and try and ram religion down your throats.
BTW everywhere else in Europe stopped having wars between Catholics and Protestants a century or more before the UK. I only recently started listening to Radio Maria NL (I found the station by chance when they were on the old medium frequency band) initially just to improve my Dutch but found the content to be genuinely interesting – they instruct you to look beyond the Bible for spiritual guidance and point out there are many interpretations of what is found in there; they also express very tolerant views towards those of other sexualities / religions / cultures; although they do encourage traditional family structures.
There is plenty of honest and frank debate about the abuse scandals and other failings of the church as well.
A priest actually said on the youth programme you can play voetbal at any suitable time provided you play fair and work as a team; and Jesus approves. Another congratulated Groningen FC (in a mostly Protestant area) for winning the cup (which they had never managed to do for years) – BTW they also do all those marches too but there is never any trouble (it is more like carnival which is also a part of it).
Even EWTN Deutschland which I expected to be more traditionalist is similar in its outlook.
BTW When I was a kid (1977) this was in the charts (Boney M are actually Dutch/German) – which is what the rest of Europe thought about the UK….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgSuSj-6_C4
