Living Catholic with Monsignor Don Wolf

Prayer is suddenly everywhere online, from polished apps to celebrity invitations to “join us” for a few minutes a day. Are we witnessing a genuine renewal of prayer, or are we simply more aware of it because the internet puts constant spiritual marketing in our pocket? If we can learn to approach God together, maybe we can begin to hunger for the unity Christ desires, and avoid the shallow cycle...

Missiles fly, predictions spread, and suddenly “World War III” becomes a casual phrase on the lips of people who will never pay the real cost. In this episode, let's take a sober, Catholic look at the war talk surrounding current military conflict with Iran, and why reckless language can do more than describe reality. Words can pressure leaders, inflame public emotion, and make escalation fee...

What if the real plot twist isn’t learning you’re dead—it’s discovering you’re already alive? In this episode, I start with the movies we all know, from Ghost and The Sixth Sense to Shaun of the Dead, and then flip the lens to reveal a deeper current running through ancient myths, modern history, and the Gospels. Instead of a world where choice manufactures meaning, we enter a world where meaning...

What if the loudest place in town is the best place to learn how to pray? In this episode we will talk about the Living Stations of the Cross at the Blessed Stanley Rother Shrine in Oklahoma City—a crowd shouting, a cross moving, voices cracking—and follow that energy into a bigger question: how does faith change when it steps outside and faces the street? From there, we trace a living thread thro...

In this episode, we rethink sin not as a list of wrongs but as a power that shapes habits, culture and the heart, and we frame Lent as training in freedom through grace. Stories, theology and poetry converge to show how confession, prayer and the sacraments move us from bondage to hope. • why images of sin as simple stains fall short • Lent as a reset for deeper truth and renewal • Feynman’s maps...

Forgiveness can feel simple when we’re kids and impossibly heavy when life grows complicated. We open the door to the confessional and suddenly see the darkness of our own uncertainty staring back. In this conversation, we walk from childhood ritual to adult conversion, exploring why confession can become harder over time and how the sacrament still offers a direct encounter with Christ’s mercy—cl...

What if healing isn’t a narrow medical fix but a return to wholeness that touches body, soul, and community? We sit down to rethink the Anointing of the Sick as a living encounter with Christ’s presence—one that forgives, restores, and draws scattered lives back into order. Anchored in James 5 and the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ healing, we explore how the Church keeps that same hope alive at hospit...

What happens when the culture that once supported everyday faith turns indifferent—or even hostile—to belief? We take an unflinching look at that question and map a path forward that blends sturdy community with courageous truth-telling. Drawing on Rod Dreher’s ideas, we explore how the Benedict Option can look beyond cloistered walls: neighborhood prayer groups, classical academies that form soul...

What happens to a country when the value of life is negotiated instead of protected? In this episode, we take a hard, honest look at how abortion has reshaped law, culture, and conscience from Roe to Dobbs, and why the arguments on both sides have stayed fixed even as methods and numbers shift. With clinics declining and chemical abortions rising, the data reveal a sobering reality: legality moves...

In this episode, we trace how Scripture, history, and lived experience confront modern corruption, then map a practical path toward honesty built on guardrails, subsidiarity, and courage. The call is clear: design for integrity, tell the truth out loud, and hold hope steady in Christ. • warnings in the Bible against bribes and favoritism • original sin as a reason for guardrails and audits • the p...

In this episode, we trace Christmas beyond the manger to Epiphany, where the Magi reveal a Messiah meant for every nation and not just one people. From creation’s scope to early Church debates, we show why inclusion is baked into the Gospel and how to watch for God in nature and culture. • Epiphany as culmination of Christmas  • Gift giving rooted in the Magi’s homage  • Creation narratives showin...

The year handed us a headline few expected: an American chosen as Pope. From the first moments of white smoke and Latin announcements to the weight of global expectations, we explore what this means for a church that must listen beyond its borders. I share why international experience matters in a leader who represents the message of Jesus to the world, and how the name Leo XIV quietly nods to the...

What does Christmas look like when you’re 15 million miles from home with no space for gifts and no time for tinsel? ************ Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.

A forgotten herald stands at the water’s edge, and his voice still changes how we hear the Gospel. In this episode, we revisit John the Baptist not as a narrative warm-up but as a towering witness whose movement endured for centuries, whose courage confronted power, and whose finger pointed a generation to the Lamb of God. Along the way, we wrestle with why modern preaching sidelined him, how an o...

A cloak without brushstrokes. Roses blooming out of season. A bishop on the brink of giving up. In this episode, we follow the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe from the hill of Tepeyac into the charged world of 16th‑century New Spain, where evangelization faltered, questions about human dignity raged, and a simple message—build the church—carried a meaning far larger than a construction site. Along...

Advent begins where few expect it: not with soft lights and carols, but with an unveiling. In this episode, we open the new liturgical year by facing the word apocalypse in its original sense—revelation—and asking what it discloses about our time, our communities, and our hearts. From a journalist who tried to expose church hypocrisy and instead found ordinary generosity, to a parish in Soweto tha...

Start with the paradox that changes everything: the same Jesus who hangs condemned on a cross is the one who reigns as King of the universe. In this episode, Monsignor Wolf traces how that tension—cross and crown—does not dilute faith but sharpens it, turning the liturgical year into a slow, bright unveiling of love that actually orders a chaotic world. From Advent’s apocalyptic readings to the st...

In this episode, Monsignor Wolf reflects on his 70th birthday and uses small annoyances to open a larger reflection on civility, hidden suffering, and the danger of loose talk about civil war. History, media literacy, and prayer guide us toward mercy, truth, and peace, with a closing poem on the gifts of age. • loud noise and fraying civility as signals of respect • hats in church as a cultural pr...

A minute of silence on November 11, 1918 did not end the world’s turmoil—it exposed it. In this episode, Monsignor Wolf opens with the Armistice and follow the shockwaves: empires dissolving, borders reshaped in Central Europe and the Middle East, and a fragile “peace” that many leaders privately admitted would last only twenty years. From Austria-Hungary’s collapse to the reassembling of the Otto...

In this episode, Monsignor Don Wolf explores All Souls Day through the lens of communion across time and the hope of purgatory as purifying love. A hospital story, Scripture, and the saints help illustrate why praying for the dead is not empty sentiment but solidarity in Christ. • one Church that includes the living and the dead • universality of grace from Adam to the apostles and to us • communi...

In this episode, Monsignor Wolf pushes past the noise around Halloween and returns to its heart: All Hallows’ Eve as preparation for All Saints. He explores the communion of saints, how their lives shape ours, and how holiness takes root in real times and places. • reclaiming Halloween as the vigil of All Saints • communion with the saints as living friendship • Stephen’s witness and Paul’s awaken...

In this episode, Monsignor Wolf explores why original sin remains a clear, useful lens for understanding human rivalry and broken freedom, and how grace in Christ offers a real path of rescue. Along the way, he tests rival answers, from detachment to law to social engineering, and find their limits. • asking better questions in faith as in science • defining original sin as foundational disorder •...

In this episode, we mourn two Oklahoma priests and reckon with what brotherhood, death, and the promise of resurrection demand of our vocation. We reflect on last rites, family grief, priestly identity, and the quiet discipline of presence at the edge of life. • priestly life lived near death and dying • last rites as reconciliation, anointing, commendation • stories of peaceful deaths and hard de...

A single question can bend the arc of a life: Will many be saved—or only a few? In this episode, Msgr. Wolf explores how generations shifted from “heaven is promised but not presumed” to “heaven is assumed if we’re decent,” and why both comfort and terror can miss the heart of grace. We unpack the old struggle over predestination and assurance, and how Sunday worship takes shape from those assumpt...

In this episode Father Wolf reflects on Erica Kirk's public forgiveness of her husband's murderer and explores how this fundamental Christian teaching continues to surprise our culture despite being central to our faith. We examine why such a basic element of Christianity stunned observers and what it reveals about our disconnect between religious teaching and practice. • The memorial ra...