Living Catholic with Monsignor Don Wolf

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 moral agency, and living with the consequences of our choices 
• weighing public skill and private integrity without chasing impossible perfection 
• redemption, fairness, and resisting rumor when judging candidates 

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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 Sunday.

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. We also talk about what attracts him to Catholic stability: a durable tradition, shared doctrine, and a practical way of life that includes Mass, confession, Lent, and raising kids in a faith that can outlast moods and trends. If you’ve ever felt the gap between what you’ve achieved and what you actually need, this conversation may feel familiar.

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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 Sunday.

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. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.

“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 Sunday.

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 Sunday.

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 distinction between imitating and duplicating. A saint’s holiness should animate your life, not dictate your alarm clock, and the John Wesley example shows why copying details can miss the point while still leaving the heart unchanged. 

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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 Sunday.

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 have never heard of Oklahoma’s Catholic history or the Church’s experience in Guatemala. A new documentary debuting in August and a feature film in development for 2027 offer fresh ways to bring a complicated, high-stakes story to theaters, streaming, and audiences across the country.

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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 Sunday.

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: a need to be healed, to tell the truth, and to hear mercy spoken out loud. When life feels shaky and sin feels heavy, the words of absolution can feel like oxygen. 

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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 Sunday.

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 be doing in our time. My best read is simple: people are starving for meaning, they have tried “everything else,” and they are finally ready for a road that leads somewhere. And underneath all of that is the deepest attraction of the Church: not perfection, but forgiveness and redemption.

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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 Sunday.

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 contrast the propaganda legend of the Angel of Mons with the sober truth that no angels are required to explain sacrifice, yet God is still Lord of all human life, even the grim responsibilities of defense in a fallen world. 

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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 Sunday.