I feel much the same. My affiliation was Catholic. By the time I was 8 y.o., I was very skeptical about a lot of the miraculous stuff, but I still loved church. Then they started changing stuff and a lot of beauty got lost.

The thing that really drove me away was when they started with the handshaking in the middle of Mass. I absolutely hate that. I've been with friends to other Christian churches where they do that, and it seems fine. People are really friendly and warm, and the handshaking feels natural. People actually exchange a few friendly words. I enjoyed it. But, at a Catholic Mass, it feels forced, stilted and out of place. People whisper "Peace be with you." at each other, but it's scripted. It's in the middle of the sacred liturgy, so no one feels free to start chatting. It's just this dry, formal, little ritual, where you turn in every direction, and I hate it. It would be better if we did that before Mass started and could actually chat with each other, or say a few sincere words of our own. That's how it was at churches of other faiths that I went to.

Then there's the awful music. I love and collect songs of every type. These new-fangled Catholic hymns are atrociously lacking in any poetry or in any melodic beauty. They're awful. I miss the organ music. For some reason, a piano sounds crappy, when it's played in a Catholic church. I like the guitars, but the songs just aren't much good.

Then a lot of the Catholic churches built in modern times are simply ugly. They got rid of some things, like a lot of the candles. An electric candle is not a candle IMHO.

So I've drifted away for these and other reasons. I used to love to stop in to a church in the middle of the week to say a few prayers and feel nearer to God. But now the churches are mostly all locked up. It used to be that we felt like they belonged to us. Now they seem to belong to the diocese, and that's not exactly "us" anymore. My church where I grew up was closed. A lot of parishes and their churches have been closed by the diocese, as not being financially sustainable. It's heart-breaking to see the place where you made so many memories shuttered.

I miss how it used to be.