The traditionalist type church that I was associated with for a very, very short time offered me no real answers
The Roman Catholic church was known to be in a state of upheaval during the timeframe when you attended, due to the adoption of the Novus Ordo Missae and other controversies, which made it very different compared to what it had been until the late 1960s or what it became after the positive influence of Pope Benedict XVI.
The experience of worship in an Eastern Orthodox Church, an Oriental Orthodox Church, a traditional Anglican church (such as the Continuing Anglican churches in the US or certain conservative parishes of the Church of England) or a confessional Lutheran church of the evangelical Catholic variety is going to be materially different from the experience you had within Roman Catholicism.
The problem with your restated point is the same one that I objected to with my initial post: in generalizing all “traditionalist-type” churches and equating them with the unpleasant experience you had in Roman Catholicism, you are engaging in something of a non-sequitur. There are numerous specific reasons why one might have an unpleasant experience in the Roman Catholic Church, even today, that would not translate over to other traditional churches (for example, there is the problem, shared by the Roman Catholic Church and many liberal mainline Protestant churches of liberal theologians and the tendency of liberal churches to alienate their members over issues related to human sexuality, for example. There were also several problems specific to the Roman Catholic Church in the 1970s including a liturgical transition, clergy who were unused to preaching or not as accomplished at preaching as they are at present, and also, it was during the 1970s that many of the worst incidents of sex abuse happened within the Roman Catholic Church: it was a dark time for our Roman Catholic friends, an era which reached its nadir when Pope Paul VI’s successor Pope John Paul I mysteriously died 33 days after taking office.
Things did improve during the staunchly anti-communist Papacy of Pope John Paul II, and during the theologically conservative and traditionalist papacy of Pope Benedict XVI, but since then under Pope Francis we’ve seen the liberal bishops reach new heights of power with the “Synodal Way” movement in Germany, for example, which is basically a pretext that seeks to change Roman Catholic doctrine on homosexuality so as to align it with the liberal Protestant churches of Western Europe, which is extremely distressing to my traditional Catholic friends.
Given all of these specific issues, my point is that you cannot prejudge all “traditional-type” churches by the experiences you had in the Roman Catholic Church in the 1970s without committing a logical fallacy of the non sequitur variety.
I also wish to be clear, in no way do I wish to diminish whatever closeness to Christ our True God you have come to experience since your unplesant encounter with Roman Catholicism. My point is merely that the experience you had in Roman Catholicism was specific to Roman Catholicism and does not automatically apply to all other churches that are sacramental or liturgical in character, a group which includes a large range of denominations which worship God in different ways and which in many cases have uniquely beautiful and distinctive forms of worship and private devotion.
I should add that I am very fond of the Salvation Army, despite the fact that it is a non-sacramental and aliturgical church, although I greatly regret its non-sacramental and aliturgical character (and I have heard that some Salvation Army clergy have begun administering Baptism and celebrating Holy Communion, which their founder originally intended, as he was a Methodist, but he was persuaded not to by his wife who was a Quaker, who subscribed to the Quaker error that these sacraments are something engaged in in a personal spiritual manner as opposed to something celebrated in the Church. But nonetheless, the beautiful worship of the Salvation army, in terms of their hymns, their brass bands, their uniforms and so on, combined with their relentless focus on charity, is extremely moving, and so I recognize them as Christians and I respect them (and it is the case that the Salvation Army does not prohibit nor discourage its members from receiving the sacraments elsewhere, which is good, but they could do better in accordance with the plain meaning of the Gospel).
The Gospel is really the heart of the matter, I should close with. Sacramental churches baptize because we are commissioned to baptize in Matthew 28:19 and equivalent pericopes in the other Gospels, and we have numerous accounts of the Holy Apostles doing this, and furthermore we celebrate the Lord’s Supper because Jesus Christ said “do this in remembrance of me until I come again” and controversially in John 6, that we must eat His Body and drink HIs blood, something which did alienate a number of Jews who were following Him, but not the eleven faithful disciples, whose faith essentially comes down to Eucharistic piety.
Furthermore, if one had any doubts about the importance of Holy Communion to the Christian life, it should be dispelled by reading 1 Corinthians, which in addition to restating the institution narrative (and the importance of tradition) in 1 Corinthians 11, in several other chapters discusses the nature of the Church as the Body of Christ, and how we are grafted onto that Body.
