Living Catholic with Monsignor Don Wolf

In this episode,  Msgr. Don Wolf takes up AI with this observation: nobody opens the window shade on an airplane anymore. From there he traces what happens when we expect to see nothing and stop looking—students eating carryout alone in their rooms, priests leaving meetings, cars and phones recording our movements and the prospect of every sermon in the country being collected and analyzed. 

Citing Pope Leo on human dignity and new archdiocesan guidelines, he argues the future of living the faith has to be face to face. 

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Monsignor Don Wolf is a pri...

Following All Saints Day and All Souls Day, Msgr. Don Wolf takes up exploring the Church's teaching on purgatory and argues it describes how we live, not just how we die. He builds the episode around Charles Williams’ novel "All Hallows’ Eve," whose two dead characters walk a journey of painful self-understanding, and around a man who spent decades resenting parents he had misjudged. Purgatory is an experience rather than a place, he says — not God making sure you've "suffered enough," but the searing work of being fully forgiven. 

Quoting Flannery O’Connor: love burns. 

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In this episode,  Msgr. Don Wolf walks through the three major days of remembrance for the Church and argues that laughing at the monstrous is how we put evil in its place — the devil hates being laughed at. He turns to All Souls and the Day of the Dead, prompted by a skeleton in a mariachi hat on a south Oklahoma City cemetery fence, and asks why Americans have lost their connection to the dead. His answers are our rootlessness and the Protestant rejection of purgatory. He closes with Father Joe Kolb’s skull and its inscription: "What you are...

In this episode, Msgr. Don Wolf makes the case that the Liturgy of the Word is not a warm-up for the Eucharist but half of the encounter itself. He traces the creative power of words from Genesis, where God speaks and it becomes so, to the ordinary moment when saying “I love you” brings something into being that wasn’t there before. Along the way he tells about a mega-church sermon that ran 35 minutes without touching the reading it followed, and about the eight-hour ordination of Cotton Mather, a caution that preaching long is not the same as preaching well. ...

In this episode, Msgr. Don Wolf marks the beatification of Blessed Fulton Sheen by asking what we’re really after when we look at a holy life. He tells about a student who insisted Blessed Stanley Rother’s body was incorrupt and his grave smelled of roses — none of it true. He traces how each age picks its heroes, from Homer’s warriors to Superman, and our habit of cutting Jefferson, Lincoln and Eisenhower down to size. He closes on what canonization actually asks about a life, with Edith Stein and Mother Teresa as examples. 

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Monsignor...

If you’ve ever wondered what makes the Church more than a local gathering with a good message, apostolicity is the missing piece. In this episode, Monsignor Wolf walks through why the Church’s claim to be founded by Christ has to be rooted in the apostles, the first witnesses entrusted with Jesus’ mission, teaching and authority. When that connection is severed, Christianity can start to drift, until faith becomes whatever our era finds convenient.

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Monsignor Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio severa...

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 purpose, unity, and the startling claim that the whole Church is truly present in every local Church. Whether you enter a shrine in Oklahoma...

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. Monsignor Wolf pushes back using the New Testament itself, especially Saul’s conversion. Saul encounters Christ on the road, but it is Ananias who brings hi...

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 distinct without falling into slogans or tribalism?

Where do you see the need for Christian unity most clearly?

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Monsignor Don Wolf i...

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.” 

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Monsignor 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 epi...

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 shift wasn’t about “winning” a debate but about suddenly understanding every word and feeling the weight of getting it right. 

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Monsignor Don Wolf is a priest o...

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 deserves honor, even across disagreement 
• why campaign media is built to capture attention more than convey truth 
• “the medium is the message” as a tool for election-season discernment 
• choosing as...

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 teaching enters the picture, especially Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum and the Church’s insistence on human dignity, a living wage, and an economy ordered toward human flourishing...

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 framed as compassion, what stops the definition of compassion from expanding until it consumes the vulnerable?

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Monsignor Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City...

“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 attention. 

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Monsignor 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 S...

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.

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Monsignor 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 S...

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. It is the Church recognizing a real holiness that can guide all of us toward the goodness of God. 

We also make an important disti...

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, pastoral care, and fidelity still challenge our own discipleship.

From there, I explore what it takes to make Blessed Stanley’s story accessible to more people, especially those who ha...

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 line still kept moving.

Changing the schedule helps, but it doesn’t create desire on its own. What draws people is something deeper...

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 renewal, not just a feel-good story.

I have seen spikes come and go, and sometimes big numbers are just big numbers. Still, it is worth asking what God may...

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 will in the American imagination. 

How do we speak about God’s providence in history without drifting into dangerous claims that God automatically endorses our side? I...

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 realizing how fast decades pass.

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Monsignor Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Ra...

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 forgetfulness, and we end up losing not just details, but meaning.

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Monsignor Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma C...

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, or simply impossible to square with modern instincts?

Our conclusion is simple and challenging: the “Third Testament” people want already exists. It’s the Church, with her...

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 about why certain lines hit modern listeners like a slap, including texts tied to slavery and the treatment of women, and we don’t pretend those reactions are irrational. We...

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 strong enough to bring us to the grave together.

In this episode, I walk through why funerals have always mattered, even before Christianity, and why the...

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 everyday life reveals how fractured our interior world can be. We talk about God’s word in Scripture, the ways God can speak beyond words, and why so man...

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 works. The irony is sharp: the chief priests are the ones who remember Jesus said He would rise, and their fear turns into a strange kind of witnes...

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 face the fog of war and the uncomfortable truth that certainty often outpaces knowledge. Even the people closest to the action rarely see the whole picture, and fast media can a...

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 by death.

In this episode, we reflect on how expectation shapes everything we do, how grief follows scripts we think we can trust, and why...

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 public gesture gets read as a political signal. 

We talk through why Jesus draws crowds so quickly: the blunt urgency of his preaching, the nearness of the kingdom of God, and...

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 of spiritual excitement that fades when the “sheen wears off.”

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Monsignor Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic...

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 feel normal. If wars are easier to begin than to end, then the way we speak at the beginning matters more than we admit. 

We walk through history to show how media voices have...

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 arrives first, solid and surprising, and our choices learn to catch up.

I also share about a vivid near-death account that captures the shock of r...

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 through Church history, where stalls along a Roman road became sanctuaries, prayer was spoken for all to hear, and stained glass dressed Scripture in the clothes and...

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 and how pictures both help and hinder
• the slow schooling of compromise and conscience
• sin as occupying power and infectious force
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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—clear, personal, and spoken into our actual lives.

We talk about the hidden cost of carrying a child’s moral vocabulary into adult decisions, the discouragement of “same old sins,” and the slow, relati...

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 hospital beds, in family circles, and in moments when courage feels thin.

We walk through the misconceptions that reduce anointing to “Last Rites,” tracing how Vatican II renewed the...

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 souls, guilds that dignify work, and friendships that keep hope alive when headlines don’t. This isn’t about hiding from the world; it’s about building centers of gravity where love of God and neighbor can breathe.

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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, but the practice persists, and the ripple effects stretch across families, faith, and the fabric of public life.

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Monsignor Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese...