Not a cult, but totally without authority.
As a convert to Catholicism from nominal, non-practicing, half-made-up pseudo-Christianity, I wanted to figure out which Church was the true one. The reason why Protestantism did not appeal at all (I first started going evangelical) is that it was all about one’s “personal relationship”, “personal”, “personal”, “personal”.
How did I know that I wasn’t just making stuff up, and whipping myself into some emotion that wasn’t really God but just my own making?
I didn’t want something of my own making, I wanted something that could really help me, a real person to rescue me. How do we get rescued by something we make up?
So authority is a big deal to me, and a major blessing to us Catholics. We have a Papa, who we can trust to guide us. That is so rare in this world.