The great danger to religious sorts (and I hope it is fair to include myself among those of a religious bent) is that one's vocation, or theological dispute, or worship itself, can become an idol, supplanting God from God's rightful place at the Center of Things. I may maintain, in my correct opinion, that Thomas Tallis is vastly superior to Marty Haugen, and that the Roman Catholics' attempts at translation pale in comparison to the peerless language of Cranmer, and that, all things considered, ad orientem is probably a better way of celebrating a Mass, but the moment that any of these opinions distracts me from the Charity which is the heart of God, I have committed idolatry. We forget, in our attempts to perform good music for the rite, that the rite itself is no substitute for God.
Recently I've been reading C.S. Lewis's quite sensible (though not particularly scholarly) essays on the Psalms. While I'll recommend the whole book to you, I'll only quote a relevant passage:
[N]o sooner is it possible to distinguish the rite from the vision of God than there is a danger of the rite becoming a substitute for, and a rival to, God Himself. Once it can be thought of separately, it will; and it may take on a rebellious, cancerous life of its own. ... Worse still, [rituals] may be regarded as the only thing [God] wants, so that their punctual performance will satisfy Him without obedience to His demands for mercy, "judgement", and truth. To the priests themselves the whole system will seem important simply because it is both their art and their livelihood; all their pedantry, all their pride, all their economic position, is bound up with it.
The frightening thing for a church musician, of course, is that we are just as susceptible as priests to this sort of distortion. It's enough to make one wonder whether we really need professional church musicians at all.
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In other news: Praetorius! | Prakticello!
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