Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is this odd split in American society that makes this possible. You can go through your entire life, end up a professional journalist at the Times and not actually have asked someone about their sincerely held faith and practice. Kids rarely talked about religion in HS, outside of like the Interfaith club. (I ran my high school's and we had an annual panel of a rep from each major religion. I was was quite popu…
I spent most of the first 30 years of my life surrounded by and friends with one flavor of deeply religious Christian or another (if my high school had had an 'interfaith' club, the faiths would have been 'Baptist' or 'Dutch Reform'), including Catholics. I say that to point out that the only reason I know there's something special about 'cathedrals' as opposed to other churches is because I read a bit of trivia once…
If that trivia was that a cathedral is required to make a city, or that the presence of a cathedral makes a place a city, then that is _wrong_, though commonly believed. It was the case during the 16th century, kind of (Henry VIII did it) but it became far messier after that; by the 19th century non-cities with cathedrals and cities without cathedrals both existed.