You wrote:
“So, of course, because “your” church is the prettiest, the fanciest, the best musically, the purest liturgically, the closest to “heaven-like”, the sweetest smelling, the...., it is therefore, the most true?”
The Church is true because Christ sent it. No Protestant sect was ever sent by Christ. They were all man made starting in the 16th century.
“Who do you think is most impressed by the grandeur? God or man???”
Man is most impressed by the grandeur he can see - which is limited by the flesh. God is glorified by the grandeur seen and unseen. Remember, each one of our parishes, no matter how humble, is visited by God Himself in the Eucharist. He is not merely spiritually present, but sacramentally present and is attended by his angels.
I always think of things like these two paintings: http://www.catholicbible101.com/thepowerofthemass.htm
Two paintings?
I always think of the sets of two paintings in Prague's Bethlehem Chapel, in the time of Reformer Jan Hus, mid-14th century:
But there were those huge paintings on the warehouse-like walls of Bethlehem Chapel, arranged in pairs, and they infuriated the Roman Church authorities. There was a picture of a crowned Pope, who just happened to resemble the current Pope, sitting on his throne, with Cardinals prostrating themselves at his feet. And right next to it a picture of Jesus, washing his disciples’ feet. There was a picture of a richly clad and bejeweled Pope being helped into the saddle of a magnificent warhorse. And right next to it a painting of Jesus, dressed in a threadbare robe, riding a donkey into Jerusalem.
Bethlehem Chapel, with a seating capacity of 3,000, was soon filled to overflowing. People of all social classes worshipped together --university students and their professors, tradesmen, artisans, prostitutes, government officials, even Queen Sophia herself. The catch-phrase around town was, “Read it on the walls of Bethlehem.” There were attempts by the authorities to remove Father Jan from the pulpit, followed by riots in the streets of Prague, beheadings, ecclesiastical court proceedings in far-away Constance, and finally the Church heresy trial and burning at the stake of Jan Hus. A grass roots movement, begun innocently enough by the ordinary people of Bethlehem Chapel, turned into a revolution, and calls for the Reformation of the Roman Church swept across Europe.
In the end, people of boldness and endurance and faith overcame the corruption that poisoned the Roman Church, and the result was the reformation of the Roman Church, which we now know as the Roman Catholic Church, and the birth of all Protestant Churches. It all began in Prague’s Bethlehem Chapel, where every day was like Palm Sunday.
- Excerpted from the 2010 Palm Sunday sermon of Deer Park United Methodis Church, entitled "If These Were Silent."