(no subject)

Note to fic writers: most buildings Roman Catholics use for worship are not cathedrals. They're just regular churches. It's only a cathedral if it's the church that a bishop (or higher) presides over. So there's usually only one cathedral in a region. And it's always really big and fancy with a large and ornate worship space and lots of offices for the bishop and his staff. By "large" I mean the sanctuary (worship space) is usually bigger than a football field and by "ornate" I mean the building is probably enough of a work of art that tourists come just to look at it. Some areas have large and ornate churches that are big and fancy enough they could be cathedrals, except for the fact that they don't have a bishop; those are called basilicas. Ordinary churches are much smaller and plainer, and have a lot less fine art in them. The vast majority of Roman Catholic churches are neither that big nor that fancy.

Calling an ordinary church a cathedral is sort of like calling an ordinary single-family home a palace. Both in the sense that it's absurd because it's not anywhere near big and fancy enough to be called that, but also because it implies that the place belongs to royalty. Back in the days when Europe was ruled by kings and princes, bishops were "the princes of the church."

(Also. These days, in the majority of American churches of any denomination, you are more likely to see jeans than suits. Nice slacks and a nice shirt are the most common thing to wear in most churches, but not anything as formal as a suit even on Christmas and Easter.)