Yes, of course. The act of attending mass was (and is) thought to have soteriological value. In the later middle ages, the raising of the host during the Eucharist was thought to be the most spiritually beneficial part of the mass. You even had groups of people, usually women, running around from church to church to see as many elevations as possible.

In the 14th and 15th c. you also have a further segregation of the people from the actual service. It's pretty hard to remember that before Vatican II in the 1960s, the alter was against the wall and the priest said mass with his back to the congregation. The withholding of the cup becomes commonplace (and is a primary point of the Hussite rebellion). In England, parishes begin to erect rood screens, elaborate wooden dividers that separated the area around the alter from the rest of the church.

So yes, access to the cathedral was readily available. Direct access to God was not.

See:

• French, Katherine L. The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

• Bynum, Caroline Walker. Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe. New York : Cambridge, Mass: Zone Books ; Distributed by the MIT Press, 2011.

• Vauchez, André. Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

• Kieckhefer, Richard. Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.