Church music by the unchurched: Saint-Saëns

Simply amazing Mr Cusack.
I google “Saint Saëns catholic” and the second hit I see is from my favourite blog.
And, as expected, very good it is to. But why no comments for all of five years? Perhaps your readers are not much interested in music. More likely too many of them are like the “stern Catholic” who thinks that Mozart, as a Freemason, can only be burning in hell. All very stupid, and enough to cause one to leave the Church in despair. But then we did have Benedict to keep us feeling confident …
But what of Saint Saëns himself? I am listening now to his adorable Christmas Oratorio – adorable, but not profound. A man who by all accounts had the musical gifts of a Mozart, he yet wrote nothing imperishable, if much which is eminently pleasing.
Why? Perhaps he didn’t care to exert himself, and wrote with the facility of a gifted boulevardier who had no desire to be anything more. Certainly nothing he wrote sound in the least bit laboured or deeply considered. No Brahms he.
Well, he carried it off beautifully, and never gives his hearers anything but gentle satisfaction.
I suspect that God told him off for his (very French) skepticism – and then showed him the way to Purgatory.

I must say, I think Bach’s Lutheranism is rather noticeable in his music, which great as it is, tends slightly toward the humorless and Manichaean.

Saint-Saëns is sometimes – well – almost superficial, but isn’t Mozart’s sometimes? I do find that Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus can get more profound when writing sacred music, though, and it’s a pity if Saint-Saëns couldn’t do the same.