Living Catholic with Monsignor Don Wolf

Church today can feel like a personal preference, one more choice on a long list, like picking a flavor in the ice cream aisle. In this episode, Monsignor Wolf pushes back on that idea and asks a sharper question: what if “Catholic” is not a brand name at all, but the defining mark of what the Church is meant to be? “Universal” is part of the definition, but go beyond geography to talk about purpo...

Holiness is not a personality type for a few intense people. It is what human beings are made for, and it is the reason the Church exists at all. In this episode, Monsignor Wolf explores the second of the four marks of the Church: Holy. Modern spirituality often assumes the Church is optional, that we can piece together a private path to God, and that the sacraments are nice but not necessary. Mon...

Three churches on the same intersection can feel normal in modern America, but it should also make us pause. If Jesus is Lord with one Gospel, what does it mean when Christianity looks like a strip mall of options?  In this episode, Monsignor Wolf wrestles with the practical question behind all those signs: what is the Church supposed to be, and how do we explain what makes the Catholic Church dis...

In this episode, Monsignor Wolf wrestles with the question: what did the 1960s do to us, and what do we do with that legacy now? A retired bishop’s first novel, Behind Closed Doors by Francis Anthony Quinn, becomes a small but revealing window into seminary life, priestly formation, and the changing atmosphere of the Church from the 1940s and 1950s into the era we call “the sixties.”  ************...

The hottest Catholic arguments love big labels: Latin Mass, Vatican II, governance, schism. But I’ve been wondering something simpler and harder to tweet about: what did those years actually feel like for regular people sitting in the pews and serving at the altar?  In this episode, I share memories of becoming an altar server right as the prayers began moving from Latin to English, and why that s...

In this episode, we take a hard look at why self-government demands more from us than showing up on election day and then tuning out. We connect Catholic faith to civic responsibility, media wisdom, and the kind of moral realism that helps us vote with both hope and clear eyes.  • our responsibility as citizens between elections, not only at the polling place  • politics as a vocation that deserve...

I just finished J.D. Vance’s “Communion: My Return to Faith,” and what stays with us is not a campaign story but a spiritual one: a man formed by instability, wounded family life, and the wider ache of Middle America after deindustrialization and the opioid crisis, trying to find a foundation that won’t crumble when life gets loud. The search turns intellectual and moral as Catholic social teachin...

A society can say it wants a “good death” and still lose its grip on what care really means. A disturbing headline from the Netherlands: a 12-year-old was euthanized, a new boundary crossed in a country that helped pioneer modern euthanasia policy. If killing is cheaper than caring, and if usefulness becomes the yardstick for dignity, then the fence around human life comes down fast. Once death is...

“Promote the cult of Blessed Stanley Rother.” When the Vatican sent that instruction after Blessed Stanley's beatification, it sounded like a technical line from Rome, but it sparked something concrete here in Oklahoma: his remains were moved so more people could visit, a shrine rose up as a place of prayer and pilgrimage and the wider Church began hearing a modern martyr’s name with fresh at...

Three men move through a Guatemalan rectory in the middle of the night, and the pastor they are hunting has already made his choice. In this episode, we walk step by step through the martyrdom of Blessed Stanley Rother, the Oklahoma-born missionary priest who served in Santiago Atitlán and refused to abandon his parish even as death squads, military occupation and fear tightened their grip. ******...

A martyr’s anniversary is not just a date on a calendar, it is a spiritual mirror. As we approach the 45th anniversary of Blessed Stanley Rother’s martyrdom, we slow down and ask what his witness still does to the Church today, from Oklahoma to Guatemala, and why we keep praying for his canonization. We also get practical about language: canonization is not a mystical shortcut or a hype machine. I...

Canonization can sound mysterious, but the heart of it is simple: the Church recognizes what God has already done in a life of real, visible holiness. In this episode, I talk about Blessed Stanley Rother and why the work at the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother in Oklahoma City is not about hype or “winning” a popularity contest, but about helping people encounter a priest and martyr whose bravery,...

Confession lines used to be short enough that a priest could sit for an hour and hear only a handful of people. Now we’re seeing the opposite, and it’s not just in one parish or one generation. In this episode, I share what I’ve watched change across Oklahoma and beyond, including the moment it clicked for me at a national youth gathering where priests heard confessions for hours on end and the li...

Good news can feel almost suspicious when you have lived through decades of grim headlines about the Church. We are seeing something different right now: record numbers of adult converts at Easter, packed Rite of Election liturgies here in Oklahoma, and even surprising reports from places like France. I walk through what we are hearing on the ground and why it may signal a real moment of Catholic...

June 6, 1944 is a date most of us can picture without opening a book, but why does Normandy carry so much weight when World War II included so many other invasions, fronts, and losses? In this episode, I start with the history we think we know, then pull back to show how “D-Day” went from a generic military label to a single moment that now represents sacrifice, courage, suffering, and national wi...

A life can turn on a single promise, and you rarely understand it on the day you make it. Monsignor Don Wolf looks back to 1981, when he was ordained a Catholic priest at Our Lady’s Cathedral in Oklahoma City, then walks forward through 45 years of priesthood with the kind of detail only memory and gratitude can sharpen: a hot, humid day, a cranky air conditioner, and the strange feeling of realiz...

Memorial Day can feel like a switch flips and suddenly it’s summer, but we don’t want the holiday to become just another weekend that disappears into the blur. In this episode, we talk about the pace of time and the quiet danger of sleepwalking through our days, when everything is “busy” yet almost nothing is remembered. If we don’t pause on purpose, the moments that should shape us can slide into...

Someone stands up in a pulpit and says the quiet part out loud: parts of the Bible are “problematic,” so maybe we should rip those pages out and replace them with a brand-new “Third Testament.” The backlash makes sense, but we don’t want to stop at outrage. We want to ask the harder question: what are the Scriptures, and how are we supposed to read them when a passage feels confusing, offensive, o...

Someone says the quiet part out loud: what if we just rip out the Bible passages that bother us? A pastor in Oakland suggests removing “problem” pages and even adding a third testament, and the internet predictably erupts. We slow the whole thing down and ask what’s actually at stake when Christians treat scripture as disposable, outdated, or only selectively “God’s Word.” In this episode, we talk...

Funerals are quietly disappearing, and I do not think we realize what we are trading away. More and more, families tell us there will be no services at all, or we learn someone has already been buried with no prayer, no gathering, no public mourning. That choice is not just about preference. It exposes what we believe about the human person, what we think death means, and whether faith is still st...

Prayer can feel like it should be simple, but many of us quietly experience it as awkward, distracting, or even discouraging. In this episode, we tackle the question: why is prayer so hard?  We reflect on how naturally human beings communicate, then trace why communion with God can feel less natural than we expect. The Christian story of Eden points to an original harmony of heart and mind, while...

Nobody walks to the tomb expecting a new world. In this episode, that’s where we start: with the disciples’ honest assumption that Jesus is gone for good, and with the uncomfortable way that grief trains all of us to think death, defeat, and shame are permanent. We talk through why the Resurrection of Jesus isn’t just a first-century mystery but a living Catholic claim that reorders how reality wo...

In this episode, we start with Iran in the headlines and then pull the camera back to something smaller and more personal: an Iranian student in an Oklahoma high school, far from home, carrying a life we barely understood. That memory becomes a challenge to how we talk about conflict, national security, and “winning” while ordinary families on every side try to survive the day.  From there, we fac...

Before sunrise, a group of women walks through a city controlled by Roman power, carrying spices and cloth for a burial they expect will be painful and final. They’re not looking for a miracle. They’re looking for a body. That simple, human mission becomes the doorway to one of the most disruptive claims in Christian faith: the tomb is open, the grave is empty, and the world is no longer limited b...

Jerusalem is packed for Passover, and it feels like the whole city is holding its breath. In this episode, we step into that tension on Palm Sunday, when Roman occupation, local religious leadership, and street-level resentment all collide with one name on everyone’s tongue: Jesus. From the first minutes, we follow the rising pressure of a place where whispers can become a revolt, and where every...