Your “catholic” girlfriend was poorly catechized; she did you a disservice.
I get your point. But the priest involved was nothing short of amazing. He had been a missionary in the Congo, so being a missionary to a college town is probably was pretty easy for him. He finally did get a real church after I graduated, but the Masses in the little hole in the wall were really something special and perhaps unique—crowded together, hearing the Latin, but somehow understanding it, the priest amongst us, not up at an altar made the Mass very intimate.