Hey you're preaching to the choir, posting to a parochial school educated thru HS kid.
I memorized that little blue Baltimore Catechism, I was an altar boy for Christ's sake....pun intended.
The homework was relentless, pop quizzes abounded. Do you remember diagraming sentences?
Somewhere in HS the rigorousness of the curriculum kicked in and with that critical thinking skills likewise.
The religious instruction no longer made sense, but it did make the study of the growth of western civilization and the literary biblical references more understandable thru college and beyond.