Criticizing Joyce: The most boring part of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Let's face it, to be honest, doesn't matter how great he is or how great the novel is overall but the middle section of James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" is a pretty tough slog. I get it, he's wracked with guilt about his sexual drive and his encounters with prostitutes and with a young woman named Emma (not too clear how or when that relationship started) and he - Dedalus, the protagonist - feels sinful and hypocritical, especially when he leads the younger students in his school on a weekend religious retreat - but then we get page after page of sermonizing, a priest going on and on about God's love for each of us, and sending his only son to redeem us, and then we get into the tortures of hell, the smell of brimstone, on and on - I really don't care, I read enough (to many) sermons years ago studying the 17th century and I don't get the point - perhaps it's meant to be vastly ironic that the church talks of love and redemption but then gets its followers to confess not through emphasis on God's love but on his wrath, the exquisite nature of punishment in damnation. It seems a tedious point to dwell on - and does not advance the novel - gives us little or no new insight into the emerging portrait of Dedalus (Joyce) the artist other than to see the kind of world and thinking that he rebelled against and left behind. Who am I to criticize Joyce, right? But still - does anyone really like this section of the novel? Don't we all want to skim it? Or skip it?