In order to approach the matter properly (and this is analogous to many other things in life) you have to recognize that the right "birth experience" is the one most focused on the end goal. But figuring out what that involves isn't entirely straightforward. It requires a willingness, but not absolute determination, to experience the natural physiology of birth, (which is normally the safest way to deliver a baby, but may not be in some instances).  And in fact, many elements of the experience itself may be relevant to achieving the end goal. A woman who feels calm and well-supported is better able to deliver a baby successfully than one who feels harried and neglected.

As in birth, so in life generally, we often find that we can't achieve the most worthwhile things unless we respect the path by which those goals are achieved. That may require some attentiveness to experience, though we should also beware of becoming too self-absorbed along the way.

Here's how I would break it down.

We should endeavor to live worthwhile lives, and we can't do that if we're constantly navel-gazing. But the most important thing in this world is humans, and our experiences make us into the kinds of people we are. So experiences do matter, although the ultimate goal shouldn't be some ephemeral thing, like having as much fun as possible. The goal should be to become excellent human beings, and to help the people around us likewise to achieve excellence.

You used childbirth as an illustration of your point. Here's the interesting thing, though: if you look at the two major "camps" in the birth wars (roughly, the "yay-science-yay-OB" camp and the "go-go-natural" camp), both will accuse the other of focusing on the experience and not the baby. And actually, I think they can both be right. Sometimes people are willing to risk maternal and child health for convenience and to avoid pain. Others are willing to run unnecessary risks for the sake of their idealized "miracle of life" experience. Both approaches are defective. (cont.)

I actually do think attending a wedding implies *some* level of sanction of the wedding and couple... but minimal. It implies that you're willing to recognize them as a legitimate married couple, and that you don't hate them enough to chase them out of your life completely. Not much more than that. If your first cousins were marrying one another, or if your cousin had stolen your husband, maybe that'd justify a boycott. These reasons seem to fall below that bar.

Here's one of the shortest "study prayers", written by St. Thomas Aquinas:

Grant, O Merciful God,
that I may ardently desire,
prudently examine,
truthfully acknowledge,
and perfectly accomplish
what is pleasing to Thee
for the praise and glory
of Thy name.
Amen

There are some very beautiful prayers that are recommended for the student or scholar, to be uttered when embarking on any intellectual pursuit, entreating God to protect us from error and guide us to truth. And of course, Church dogma were hammered out very slowly and carefully over the course of centuries, with a great deal of prayerful consideration. 

But what we have from it all is a real intellectual tradition. This is not a privileging of human thought over divine; rather, the idea is that God may reveal himself slowly over time, working through the important questions as circumstances demand, and making use of various humble but brilliant people who were raised up at appropriate times for the purpose. What comes of this is an edifice that is as mysterious as it is thorough, and as firm as it is supple. Once one has tasted orthodoxy, there really is no substitute. Having said all that, I should also say that I myself was not swept off my feet (as it were) by orthodoxy until I had already made a pretty significant good-faith effort to find something in Mormonism that I could genuinely believe, and despaired.

That's rather a slanted way of putting the difference. No serious Christian, of course, would profess a preference for the wisdom of man over that of God. The real question is: how does God reveal himself to men? 

The methods and means of divine revelation are diverse, but too often we prefer to seize on a conclusion (desired for other reasons, perhaps) and beg God to green-light it. It sometimes felt to me, in my Mormon adolescence, that that was what I was being urged to do. Questions that were asked in good faith were assumed to be posed "in the spirit of contention" (which as we all know, is of the devil), and the impression was sometimes given that the intellect was more something to be sublimated (lest it lead us to pride) than nourished (in hopes of finding truth). 

In the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, one finds intense concern over the issue of how to conform the intellect to God's, so as to enlighten reason with the light of faith. (cont)

In my view, whenever you get people in a group and urge them to extemporize on deeply personal subjects, building emotional fervor is part of the goal. And it really isn't part of every religion's spirituality. As an adult Catholic, I don't do anything of that kind. (In fact, there's never any reason for me to speak an unscripted word in a church service.) I'm sure the youth get the worst of it, but anything involving pressure to "testify" will take on some of those powerful-group-emotion elements. Mormons have a different preferred style from Pentecostals (quieter, often weepy or treacly but never wildly ecstatic), but there are many commonalities.

Yes, but if one is genuinely uncertain about the truth of the restored gospel, that way of approaching the issue can seem a little prejudiced. I wouldn't advise a young, uncertain Catholic to pursue such an approach. I would give them books and urge them to pray for insight, but not explicitly tell them what insights or convictions God should be providing. On the theological questions, I should admit that the sorts of experiences I had ("Stop asking questions, have faith and pray") could have happened in practically any church. Sometimes that's just what people say when they don't know the answers. I do myself believe that Mormons are in a more unhappy position than others, however. They rejected the carefully crafted, beautifully balanced answers of centuries of earlier Christians, and weren't really able (unsurprisingly) to come up with adequate substitutes. At the end of the day, they just can't answer a lot of the questions. Catholics are (in my view) vastly better off on this score. Even if they can't provide a pat answer to a question, they can point you to voluminous tomes in which brilliant and holy people spent considerable energy looking for one.

On the subject of testimony meetings, again, the situation is complicated. I agree that the group dynamic can sometimes bring forward good emotions/reflections and cement healthy communal relationships. But putting people into a fervor of emotion, particularly in the context of what is meant to be a powerful shared experience, can also manipulate emotions in unhealthy ways. (This is more or less what Cornelius was saying too, I think.) I don't think there's much evidence that such meetings were held in the early Church, though it's certainly true that they're not unique to Mormons. Catholics don't really do such things (or at any rate they're not part of the tradition, though I can't speak to what happens in schlocky parish youth groups nowadays.) In any case, I do think that shepherding youth through the encouragement of regular outpourings of emotion is a worrisome strategy in some respects. And when it doesn't work for someone (as it definitely didn't for me!) people are kind of at a loss for what to do with you. It's just supposed to happen that the Holy Spirit sweeps you up and declares the truth of the (Mormon) Gospel! What's *your* problem?!

The relationship between learning and simplicity within Christianity is a complicated matter; as with many things (wealth vs salutary poverty, meekness vs just wrath and so forth) Christ offers something to challenge everyone. But in the early Church the more blatantly anti-intellectual forces (Tertullian with his thunderous "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?") mostly lost out. This is not, in my view, anything to lament, because the intellectual heritage of the succeeding centuries is magnificent both in its wisdom and in the humble, obedient spirit in which it is proposed. But Mormons have a complex relationship to that intellectual heritage, what with their "great apostasy" and their explicit rejection of some of the central pillars of that theology (e.g. the Trinitarian formula). A lot of times they end up turning to feeling more as a substitute for answers than as a supplement to them... or so it seemed to me.

I don't mean to suggest that Mormons are in perfect agreement about these things. I'm speaking more of tendencies. But it seemed to me that encouragement to seek out particular feelings ("pray for the burning in the bosom which will confirm your faith") was pretty common. I was many times urged to pray for conviction about the truth of the Scriptures or the church. (This was not uncommonly offered as a possible solution to a real theological or interpretational question with which I was struggling.) Also common was the use of a kind of group-mentality emotional outpouring to bolster people's commitment. This practice is hardly unique to Mormons, but it happened to be the setting in which I encountered it. And, I do definitely think that Mormon culture has something of an anti-intellectual streak, which causes many people to dismiss rational argument as "the wisdom of the wise", urging people to turn to feeling and emotion instead. Again, I'm not insisting that this is all intrinsic to the Mormon faith per se. I'm more talking about cultural trends.

My favorite bad teacher memory: in sophomore English we did a unit on "courage" in which we read a number of stories involving people standing up for presently politically correct notions in settings in which the were not. (We pretty much hit all the usual tropes: sexism, racism, and, of course, being hated by redneck rubes for being too liberal.) Then we wrote papers on why courage is valued in society. In light of the offered examples, my thesis was that most people don't really appreciate courage that much; they just like others to agree with them, but if that agreement is shown in dramatic style, so much the better. I got a 'D' on that paper. Someone lacking a sense of irony, perhaps?

Having studies philosophy at university, I can also testify to the extreme perversions to which a kind of dehumanized "logic" can be taken...

As an Aristotelian I don't regard either feelings or logic as being per se more truth-apt; both can be manipulated, and ideally they should have a nicely symbiotic relationship that enables us to grasp truth that much more fully. But some communities tend towards privileging one over the other in potentially damaging ways. Mormons definitely had a tendency to prioritize feeling and dismiss reasoning as the product of worldly pride; then they had various techniques for trying to draw out he emotional responses they wanted, often using the dynamics of groups to powerful effect. As a Mormon teenager I dreaded the overwrought, weepy "testimony meetings" in which normal-seeming girls were transformed into torrential faucets of emotion in a matter of minutes (and then they would all in turn repeat more or less the same things, about how wonderful the church was and how they couldn't live without it.) Most of them, apparently, found this inspiring. I found it sort of creepy and unseemly, and I still think I was probably closer to right. But that doesn't mean that feelings can't be properly formative in the right context. You just shouldn't work so hard to manufacture and manipulate them.

Lots of interesting comments here. Thanks for that. I liked what King Prawn said about how attaining understanding can in itself be quite a powerful religious experience. I agree. There have been instances in my life where attaining that understanding and mental clarity most definitely felt like a gift of grace, and not at all like something I had just worked out. If you are the sort of person who craves understanding, that kind of providential guidance is deeply reassuring. God doesn't just hand us all the answers on a silver platter, but we aren't left wandering in the wilderness forever. 

Experiences of beauty and goodness can also be occasions for powerful religious experience. I love Stephen's story for showing how beauty can sometimes be the path to transformation. Though it wasn't quite as transformative as what he describes, I experienced something a little like that once when I walked into a souvenir shop outside the Vatican and saw an icon recreating Fra Angelico's "Annunciation". I was so profoundly moved that I just had to buy it (which is extremely unusual for me) and it still graces our bedroom wall. Beautiful painting.

I say Dear Leader breaks the easiest. That guy's been coddled and pampered his whole life; just threatening would be enough. Hilary would be much tougher, but I'll bet she knows where the bodies are buried.