I just had to reply to the OP. I too have a very inquisitive mind, although you seem to top me, which is rare!
What I have always found with the RCC is that the answers are all there if you keep looking and asking
different people. I go through a period of doubt, say about a doctrine, and then will be reading the Scriptures and it will jump out of the page at me that the RCC is right and I could not see it before. Then a clever protestant or atheist will throw another curl-ball at me, and again it is a process intellectually of tearing down and building up. The thing is that I have seen the RCC come out on top theologically and in exegesis so many times that I just trust the process now.
You’ll have a lifetime of study if you want even after the RCIA is finished. It is limited only by your own inquisitiveness. I recently was Confirmed, and still have hundreds of questions, but can still say that “I believe all the Holy Catholic Church teaches, believes and proclaims to be revealed by God.”
The RCIA isn’t college. There will be no exams. If I were you, I’d try and separate your obviously adavnced intellectual pursuit from the RCIA. Join message boards/ forums online and there are others who are interested as much as you. You can PM me if you like and I can introduce you to some people online who are very knowledgeable. Also, if you can, make friends with an old priest with an intellectual bent. I have a friend like that who I can ring and ask even the trickiest questions to. I hope you will be blessed enough to find someone like that too, as a friend.
However, as the priest who ran our RCIA told me “you have a very inquisitve mind, but when it comes to the spiritual realm, you are going to have to learn to live with a sense of mystery. On this side of the grave, we see only dimly, as in a dark glass.” However, as an intellectual, the RCC is the church for you. So many great thinkers.
Suggested reading: “Critical Meaning of the Bible” by Raymond E Brown. A simple, easy 100 page read, but very interesting.
With the RCIA, just sit back and take it easy, man. It’s a good time to ask the simple practical questions about Catholic life, faith, prayer (which may be very different to what you may be used to and require a lot of memorisation). For me that was a big one. I was penticostal previously.
Feel free to PM me and stay in touch. We have a similar temparament by the sounds of things. Overall, don’t expect RCIA to answer all of your intellectual questions. Use it to answer your faith and practical questions (eg about the liturgy, feast days, indulgences, intercessory prayer, lives of the Saints, Marian devotion). In other words, things which may be foreign to you.
