I'm not a Catholic, but I moved to a majority Catholic area. As such, most people I work with are some flavor of Catholic.

The thing is that a lot of these people are gladly talking about living with their partners, having sex before marriage, taking birth control, etc., which I know are all Catholic sins and maybe get you excommunicated (?). In most Protestant churches, you can do whatever you want and you'll still be a church member. Plus there's no confessional so you can just never disclose premarital sex or whatever.

So do all these people just conveniently never confess taking birth control or having premarital sex? Do they hide abortions in confessional? So what's even the point if these people know it's an excommunicable sin? Why even keep being a Catholic if you're breaking their rules but also hiding it (which I guess is a sin too)