Can we change this station, please! (editor's note).

Ever since he was an infant, my oldest son has been fascinated both by music and by electronics. I'm very happy that he inherited his music genes from his musical mother and not from his tone-deaf father. As a little baby he would love to sit in his wind-up swing and listen to the stereo. Whenever he especially liked a tune, he'd kick his little legs excitedly, point at the stereo, and yell, "Be! Be!"--his own invented word for "music." He wasn't even 2 yet before he learned how to work the VCR. And these days, at age 12 (going on 16!), he is a good trumpet player and reads electronics ad flyers and instruction manuals for fun.

But as he's entering his teen years, this interest of his is turning out to be a mixed blessing. Although not necessarily my cup of tea, I don't mind his belting out evangelical praise songs he has picked up at summer camp this year, but--call me an old fogy--I do have a hard time understanding his and his friends' fascination with rap music. I know there are those who hall the value of hip-hop's providing a creative voice of protest for otherwise marginalized groups, but when I force myself to listen to the supposedly mellower lyrics of Eminem's wildly popular new album, I still can't help but cringe.

I've tried both the mean, old authoritarian way of confiscating some CDs with hate-filled and obscene lyrics and the more promising one-on-one talks about this topic, but as of yet, we haven't found a really satisfying way to deal with this and the larger challenge of media values in our family.

As Tom McGrath notes in our cover story (pages 12-17), the home invasion of popular culture and media is one of the key spiritual challenges for families today. From my own experience, I agree with him that the spirituality of family life is a primary place for encountering God's grace in action while also still a spirituality of imperfection and messiness. McGrath highlights five key challenges and gives helpful, practical tips on how to face them.

This month's offerings also include an interview with Cardinal Walter Kasper, the German president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. I caught up with him during his recent visit to Chicago and found him to be both a clear thinker and a warm, open, and engaging interview partner. Both in our interview and in the talks he gave to ecumenical audiences in Chicago, his winning personality and sense of humor as well as his passion and commitment came through loud and clear. Maybe I've had a skewed view of Vatican officials, but meeting him certainly burst my stereotypes and explained why some in Rome have given him the nickname "Kasper the friendly cardinal." And it's nice to know, too, that someone like Kasper is considered by some to be "papabile."