Difficult for me to write this review, considering that I'm a Protestant and not Roman Catholic. But here goes...
I came for the Christmas Eve Mass, because I wanted to. I've never been to a Roman Catholic service. I had heard good things about it being beautiful, and worth going to. Which segues into my review...
* The Roman Catholic Church is obviously one of those churches that you have to grow up in, or spend a lot of time in, to understand what is going on. And that's OK. Church is made for believers and the edification of the saints. So I understand the reasoning. But as an outsider, I had absolutely no idea when to stand and when to sit and when to kneel and when to respond and what to respond with and when to make a hand gesture and whatever else. I had absolutely no idea what was going on.
* The church is big and beautiful and gorgeous.
* The priest didn't use a microphone when he spoke. This made it incredibly difficult to understand him. They obviously depend on the reverb to reach the back of the church so everyone can hear. Well, they're successful. I could HEAR, but I just couldn't understand. The reverb was too much.
Because I'm a Protestant, I will overlook the myriad of theological differences between the Protestant faith and the Roman Catholic faith in this review. I'll just leave it at the above - The church is gorgeous, but it's very hard for an outsider to understand what is happening. I'll therefore rate it right down the middle. 3* read more