IT’S USUALLY football managers who own up to employing “robust tactics” for big matches. But that was the term used by Catholic composer James MacMillan about his role in an ongoing “stooshie” (a word frequently used in connection with Scottish football games) over the future of church music and the need to refresh a tradition that has been either neglected or set aside in favour of so-so congregational singing. MacMillan, on behalf of the Musica Sacra Scotland group which he helped to found, this week had a meeting with the Bishop of Aberdeen, Hugh Gilbert, a Benedictine who, when he was Abbot of Pluscarden, oversaw some of the best chant to be heard in Scotland and who serves as president of the liturgy commission for the Scottish bishops. The composer, who