A lot of cradle Catholics are blasé about their faith and don't know what the Church teaches or what is required of them as Catholics, and sadly a lot of priests are happy to keep them in the dark. People can go through 12 years of Catholic school and get a rather superficial idea of "how Catholicism works" and then present themselves as an authority on Catholicism because "I went to 12 years of Catholic school." Converts have to dig deep and really embrace Catholicism instead of go through the motions and pass through milestones of cultural Catholicism (getting "hatched, matched, and dispatched."  It's not rigid to think that embracing a religion should have any bearing on how I live my life any different from a follower of something else.