Feelings, nothing more than feelings...

In looking for that pastoral letter from Bishop Morlino on liturgical music I came across a contentious and far ranging thread on the topic.
It is old enough that I felt no urge to refute some of the worst cant, misinformation nonsense and uninformed opinion expressed --- among the howlers is the commonly voiced notion that a church musician's preparation consists of so small a commitment of time and his skill is acquired so easily that he should no more be paid than the volunteer RE leaders who takes care of a class every week.
But that sort of failure to recognize what another's work consists of is common as dirt, - a five minute sermon takes five minutes to write, so what the hell does a priest do with all his free time; a SAHW, or M with kids in school must get to lie on the couch and watch Oprah all day eating Hot Pockets; you call that art? my five year old could do that; an actor earns a weeks salary for putting on a costume and make-up two hours a night; etc., etc. You know the drill, you know my attitude, hardly worth the trouble to contradict, (unless of course it is put forth by a pastor, finance committee, parish council member...)

But this error was what struck me:
If the music being played at Mass does not express what the people are feeling, then it's dead, dry and meaningless. It doesn't serve the purpose of what music is to be for.

There's your root mistake, buddy, there's where the whole system started to go wrong..
Liturgical music is not to express our feelings, not your feelings, not my feelings.
It is to express our Faith, and our Faith is not a "feeling," it is not an emotion.
Still less than it is to express them, is the purpose of liturgical music to generate or stir up emotions.
Appropriate liturgical music may do so incidentally, it may, particularly if it is GOOD music provoke a great range of emotion, but when it is ordered to that purpose it is likely, among other problems, to be very one-note in the emotional responses it seeks, and we are cursed with the Liturgy-As-Pep-Rally model that has damn near lost two generations of souls.
And for that one out of twenty moment when instead of Happy All the Time, the contemporary liturgy makes a concession to reality, and as a worshipping body we are instructed to portray "sad," the Pep Rally gives way to the Therapy Session.
That is why the contents of the GOH Hymnal* published by WnF is not just so ineffective to its proper purpose, but has proven so actively destructive to the practice of the Faith, and to the Church.
It has been said, in very simplistic terms, that the major difference between Classical music and Romantic music is that the latter tries to manufacture in its listeners that of which the former more diffidently calls them to recollection.
Which may be why the latter is often more accessibly "fun" the former is probably more likely to be suited to the Liturgy. But that is another topic.
Anyway, as the thread went on, (and on, and ON...) the proponent of expressing his feelings changed, you'll forgive the expression, his tune, and with it the parameters of the discussion.
Ah, music, as it was an "art," was therefore meant to express thoughts and feelings.
And the "feeling" it is most meant to express is "love" of God.
There's the second great error, and it has worked toward the destruction not just of the liturgy, but of society.
He, and perhaps most people think Love is an emotion, a feeling.
It's why the institution of marriage is in shambles, it's why the idea of commitment is alien to a large and growing segment of society.
If "love" is primarily a "feeling" - and feelings by their very nature are inconstant and unprincipled and uncontrollable - rather than an act of the will, if Romantic Love is the primary meaning of the word, then humanity has tried to anchor one of it's bedrock institutions, the Family, in quicksand.
I think sometimes that the greatest value in growing up in a larg--- in an ENORMOUS family is that one learns, not as outsiders guess, "to get along with all types," but that one needn't like someone to love him.
Job knew what Love was, he knew how to love God, even when he wasn't exactly moony about the Almighty.
When the bloom was off the rose, so to speak.
(The Office of Readings seems to have been designed especially for me, and where my thoughts are wandering at this moment in history, I sometimes think.)
(*THAT little snark, on t'other hand IS an expression of both my feelings AND my faith. WAF, only my feelings. My feelings. My feelings about feelings.... woa-woa-woah, feelings.)