What the L.A. Cathedral was intended to convey:
“There are two underlying theological truths essential to understanding the design of the Cathedral Church. The first is the LIGHT of God revealed in salvation history, especially in and through Jesus Christ.
The second is the sense of JOURNEY which describes our evolving relationship with God. We are on the journey, alone and together as the People of God, on pilgrimage, towards redemption in our lives. Therefore, as we walk away from the darkness of evil, we move towards the saving Light of Christ and the fullness of the Kingdom of God in Heaven.”
And what it conveyed to this pilgrim (emphasis mine):
“…What an odd place. As you walk up to it it looks for all the world like a CG set, no doubt in part because of the single light source and acute angles that look like forced perspective.* ….The inside felt like no less of a sci-fi set and while the scale (which you can’t come close to capturing in a photo) was mightily impressive, something about the space and the proceedings made me really understand how the rest of the world seems to view the Catholic church as a massive beaurocracy [sic] with a billion souls under its thumb….
*Or vast angles and stone surfaces too great to belong to any thing right or proper for this earth, with the abnormal geometry of dimensions apart from ours, if you’ve been reading as much Lovecraft as I have lately.”