No, not really. This is kind of a "converts mistake," in that they assume that the religion they convert to is only the educated, attractive apologists that won them over. The popular church venerates Padre Pio and really believes he could bilocate, manifested stigmata, and that you can pray to him for healing.

Happens with orthodoxy too, a lot of people get a rude awakening when they actually go into a Orthodox church and talk to people, aka "The Rod Dreher effect."

Yes, very odd for a religion based on the premise their founder is literally God incarnate, could work miracles, levitated into the sky, walked through walls, said his followers will do even greater things, and can secure his followers eternal life. Pretty inexplicable why they have all these other nutty beliefs about members of his movement. I see where you are coming from.

Yes, this is the reason. I read through plenty of philosophy and such, and Catholicism was the best synthesis as well as claiming to be historically and empirically demonstrable. Previously I was protestant and then maybe atheist, and I always felt an underlying sense of emptiness and despair. Since becoming Catholic this fundamental sense of spinning through the void has disappeared, partly because Catholicism seems to be the only worldview that really takes rigorous truth seriously. Every other perspective seems to have fundamental questions they are unwilling to entertain. I don't feel I sold out by accepting an answer to my questions.