I used to think much in the same way as you regarding the issue of “community.” I thought the only real reason I’d ever want to formally become a member of a church was to have that sort of community.
While community of worship is obviously a cornerstone of Christianity, I urge you to also look at it in a different way. It doesn’t mean that you’re a part of a social club. Congregations can tend to be extremely cliquey and gossipy, even, as even the Pope has discussed.
That’s not the reason to go or not go, in my opinion. You became a member of the Catholic Church and joined a specific parish in order to receive the sacraments. That is your duty. It can be an outlet to maximize your ability to do good in your own community (and indeed there are often many, many different ways to become involved in local ministries, whether they be homeless outreach, prison outreach, AIDS outreach, etc.). View your relationship to your parish as the road to get you to God. Not a means to satisfy your social life or feel like you belong and fit in well to a social club. A lot of people have that aspect of it for themselves too, and a lot of times those people get lost in the actual purpose of the parish, and themselves fall prey to the temptation to alienate people and gossip and form cliques.
When you wake up early on a Sunday to go to Mass, that is a sacrifice for God. Think of it all as a sacrifice. If you don’t get excessive personal satisfaction, social prestige, and a bolstered sense of importance when you go to church, all the better for its actual purpose, I say.
