For my listening pleasure...

My many travels between Lynchburg and Richmond provide for a lot of time to listen: to CD's, to radio, and, more often than not, to God.

My usual ritual for the 2+ hour drive to the See City involves listening to four podcasts I download off the USCCB website. The first is Lino at Large, described as "Catholic radio for 'Generation X'." The weekly interview program Personally Speaking with Msgr. Jim Lisante, along with American Catholic Radio and Catholic Radio Weekly round out my selections. They are each about a half hour and, if I start listening to them when I roll out of my driveway, they are just about wrapping up when I pull into the parking lot of the Diocesan Pastoral Center! Since I go about every two weeks, I have just enough to listen to both ways.

As I have posted before, I have recently been impressed with the undercurrent of spirituality that flows through Bruce Springsteen's lyrics. I am not alone. America Magazine just pulled an article by Andrew Greeley from its archives and dusted it off.

While Greeley is certainly a controversial figure in many circles, I think he provides some very interesting insights as to what it means to be a Catholic as well as why we express our Catholicism the way we do:

Springsteen is a liturgist, I propose, because he correlates the self-communication of God in secular life with the overarching symbol/narratives of his/our tradition. Moreover, I also propose that he engages in this "minstrel ministry" without ever being explicit about it, or even necessarily aware of it, precisely because his imagination was shaped as Catholic in the early years of life. He is both a liturgist, then, and a superb example of why Catholics cannot leave the church.
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A word about the Catholic imagination: Unlike the other religions of Yahweh, Catholicism has always stood for the accessibility of God in the world. God is more like the world than unlike it. Hence Catholicism, unlike Protestantism, Judaism and Islam, permits angels and saints, shrines and statues, stained glass and incense and the continuation of pagan customs—most notably for our purposes here, holy water and blessed candles.

The entire article is worth a read.