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

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 helped tilt nations toward catastrophe, from the great wars of the twentieth century to the myths and resentments that linger long after the shooting stops. We also explore why we’re drawn to violent headlines, using Walker Percy’s insight that carnage seizes our imagination more easily than care. When the news cycle becomes a steady diet of destruction, it’s easy to lose moral clarity, forget proportionality, and stop asking what any conflict is truly for. 

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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.

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 recognition—seeing your own body from above—and use it to ask why so many stories hinge on slow awakening. From the Egyptian Book of the Dead to C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, humanity keeps circling the same threshold: what does it take to notice the rules have changed? That question points straight to the New Testament, where Jesus doesn’t negotiate a future possibility but announces a present reality. The time is fulfilled. The page has turned. Whether or not we voted for it, the kingdom is at hand.

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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.

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 cities of its makers so salvation felt near, not archived.

Joining the crowd reveals our place in the Passion, and acting the story teaches what reflection alone cannot. Along the way, Augustine’s surprise at Ambrose reading silently becomes a window into the rise of interior privacy—and how modern habits can fence faith indoors. We talk about monasteries that formed charity by sharing work, prayer, and even sleep; seminaries that reintroduced roommates to recover the muscle of common life; and processions and Holy Week traditions that knit strangers into a people. 

We also face the pitfalls. Public religion can turn hollow, just as private piety can grow stale. The remedy is union. Lent invites us to bring our bodies into the story: to read the Passion and then walk it, to pray with our hands as much as our minds, to place acts of mercy where the city can see, and to let shared practices at home—meals, prayers, apologies—turn interiors into common ground.

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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.

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
• confession as rescue and victory, not mere bookkeeping
• shared bondage and shared grace in the Church
• practical courage to begin again and recalibrate

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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.

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, relational pace of real change. Along the way, we unpack the sacramental heart of confession: how “I absolve you” bridges twenty centuries and places us at the foot of the Cross, not as spectators but as people being restored. We also share practical ways to prepare well, using precise language for motives and patterns, and adopting a fearless moral inventory that names both faults and graces. Gratitude becomes part of repentance, protecting us from despair and teaching us how to cooperate with what God is already growing.

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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.

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 sacrament’s breadth. Along the way, we talk about the many ways healing can appear: sometimes instantaneous and astonishing; often gradual, working with medicine and the body’s resilience; and, at times, integrative, where someone learns to live whole with lasting limits like disability or addiction. We also open the door to a wider circle of grace—how anointing can reconcile families, reset priorities, and make room for mercy when fear crowds the room. And we speak plainly about death as the final healing, when the promise of resurrection reframes loss with hope.

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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.

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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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.

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

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 parish audit story and structural reform
• history’s long record of graft shaping outcomes
• subsidiarity as right-sized decision making
• culture change through truth-telling over image
• Challenger hearings as a model of plain accountability
• active resistance to corruption, not mere avoidance
• hope rooted in Christ as the anchor for reform

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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.