Bishop Barron is in the news again, and as usual, it’s complicated. In this episode of Whiplash, I respond to his recent Word on Fire video "The Suffocating Warmth of Marxist Collectivism," examining the claims he makes about collective responsibility, freedom, and economic ideology. I dig into how Catholic social teaching intersects with contemporary economic realities, from industrial-era labor struggles to today’s precarious employment and widening wealth gaps. Along the way, we explore how liberation—far from being threatening—is actually about expanding human dignity and creating conditions where more people can thrive.

This episode also takes a broader look at Barron’s public rhetoric, including his appearances in partisan media and commentary on Western civilization. I reflect on the tension between theology and politics, the role of liturgical language in framing social authority, and the ways moral imagination can help us see beyond ideological extremes. Ultimately, this episode asks: what does true liberation look like when it centers human flourishing instead of rigid ideologies?

Masculinity is often shaped less by attraction to women than by the recognition men seek from other men. Using the public reaction to Timothée Chalamet and the online discourse around “twink death” as a starting point, this episode explores the concept of homosociality and the powerful role status plays in shaping male identity. Drawing on sociology, pop culture, and media analysis, we examine how masculinity is often performed through signals meant to earn legitimacy within male peer groups, influencing everything from aesthetics to career choices to public personas.

The episode also challenges common myths about testosterone, highlighting research suggesting that testosterone does not simply produce aggression but can also reinforce bonding, cooperation, and relational commitment depending on the surrounding cultural incentives. Through the lens of transgender experience and reflections on gender essentialism in Catholic culture, this conversation asks what healthier masculinity could look like if status were more strongly associated with care, integrity, emotional maturity, and responsibility rather than dominance or performance.

Resources & References

• Zhang, Jenny – Timothée Chalamet’s twink death

• Weber, Max – theories of class, status, and power

• Ridgeway, Cecilia – Status: Why Is It Everywhere? Why Does It Matter?

• Imara, Mariam – Homosociality – Or: How I found a name for the thing I want to smash and it’s not „the patriarchy“

• The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences – The Significance of Status: What It Is and How It Shapes Inequality

• Barnard College – Break This Down: The Social Myth of Testosterone

• Jordan-Young, Rebecca & Karkazis, Katrina – Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography

• Petric, Kalcounis-Rueppell, & Marler (2022) – testosterone and pair bonding study in monogamous mice

• McBee, Thomas Page – Man Alive and Amateur

• Kearns, Shannon – No One Taught Me to Be a Man

• Green, Jamison – Becoming a Visible Man

• Commentary by Derek Guy on masculinity aesthetics in media

• Ezra Klein in conversation with Anand Giridharadas, who discusses the status issues at play with the Epstein Files

Across the United States, a growing wave of laws is targeting transgender people—restricting access to medical care, limiting legal recognition, and threatening basic rights in everyday life. At the same time, some Catholic leaders are increasingly portraying transgender identities and legal recognition of trans people as threats to religious liberty. When a principle meant to safeguard conscience is used to justify policies that harm vulnerable communities, it raises urgent moral and theological questions about what religious freedom is actually meant to protect.

This episode examines the U.S. bishops’ 2026 Annual Report on Religious Liberty and the broader political and legal landscape surrounding it. Looking at recent court decisions, federal and state policies, and the Church’s own language about “gender ideology,” I explore how religious liberty is being reframed in ways that directly impact transgender people. I also ask a deeper question for Catholics today: whether this use of religious freedom reflects the spirit of Catholic teaching—or distorts it in ways that undermine human dignity.

Additional reading: https://maxwellkuzma.substack.com/p/two-errors-catholics-make-about-gender

What happens when Catholic theology begins not with abstract debates about transgender people, but with the lived experience of transgender embodiment itself? In this conversation, Max Kuzma sits down with his friend Maddie Marlett to explore what it means to encounter Christ through transition, embodiment, and the lifelong process of becoming. Rather than treating trans lives as distant questions to be analyzed, this discussion centers the spiritual and theological insights that emerge from actually living as a trans Catholic.

Maddie shares her journey growing up Catholic, how her understanding of God evolved through transition, and the role that supportive community—especially through DignityUSA—played in sustaining her faith. Together, Max and Maddie reflect on themes at the heart of Christian theology—incarnation, sacramentality, death and rebirth—and consider how transgender lives might illuminate, rather than threaten, the church’s understanding of the body and the mystery of God’s presence within it.

In this episode of Whiplash, we unpack the concept of “scandal” in the Catholic Church — what it means in the tradition, and how it often functions in practice. With Chris Damian and Justin from Empty Chairs, we focus especially on the uneven way scandal gets applied to queer Catholics — and with Max’s perspective, to trans people in particular — where identity itself is often treated as suspect, even when someone is living in line with the church’s stated expectations. At the same time, we examine how Catholic institutions sometimes respond when credible allegations surface within their own ranks, and why the instinct is so often defensiveness rather than accountability.

Find Chris online @cdamianwrites

Find Justin online @emptychairshome

Find Max online @maxwellkuzma 

Content statement: Please be aware that this episode includes discussion of clergy sexual abuse, grooming, and institutional misconduct. While we do not go into graphic detail, these topics may be difficult for some listeners. Please take care while listening.

Millennials have been blamed for everything from killing napkins to buying too much avocado toast, so naturally we decided to talk about the economy. In this episode, I’m joined by my former Franciscan University classmate Shannon Kaschak to unpack why “just budget better” isn’t a serious economic policy, what a $3-per-meal proposal says about how poverty gets framed, and how culture wars keep working people fighting each other while wealth quietly concentrates at the top. We laugh. We cringe. We side-eye late-stage-capitalism lunchables.

But underneath the memes and millennial slander, we’re getting into something real: what Catholic social teaching actually says about money, power, and who the economy is for. From for-profit detention centers to speculative tech bubbles to the way marginalized people become political distractions, we’re asking what it would look like to build systems where nobody gets left behind. It’s avocado toast with a preferential option for the poor — and yes, we mean that.

Centering yourself in a world that profits from your fragmentation is a quiet act of resistance. In this episode of Whiplash, Max sits down with Cassidy Hall to explore how contemplation can become an embodied, grounded practice — especially for queer and trans people navigating spiritual burnout, political chaos, and inherited religious tension. Drawing from Cassidy’s powerful book, Queering Contemplation, the conversation moves beyond rigid either/or thinking and into integration: body and spirit, identity and mystery, action and stillness. For Max, reading this book as a transgender Catholic opened up new language for embodiment as holy — not something to transcend, but something to inhabit.

If you’ve ever felt disconnected from your body, wary of silence, or unsure whether Christian contemplation belongs to you, this episode offers a grounded and accessible entry point. ✨ Book Giveaway: Max is giving away copies of Queering Contemplation to subscribers. To enter, make sure you’re subscribed and fill out the Google Form here: https://forms.gle/k87VJM8pjFmugs3P9 Winners will be contacted by email and asked to provide a mailing address.

Power and exploitation often feel unstoppable, but much of what we perceive as power is actually empty. Those who dominate and extract — whether in governments, corporations, or cultural institutions — survive by feeding off the labor, energy, and lives of others. They cannot create, nurture, or love. Recognizing this emptiness reveals an important truth: the real power lies in those who build, care, create, and share. Small acts of generosity, solidarity, and love have the capacity to transform communities and challenge even the most entrenched systems.

The Gospel, together with Catholic Social Teaching, offers guidance through these storms. Human dignity, solidarity, care for the vulnerable, and the moral responsibility to use our gifts for the common good provide a framework for resisting exploitation and fostering liberation. By centering compassion, creativity, and community, we become the light in a world often shadowed by greed and violence. Even seemingly small acts — listening, mentoring, sharing resources, or protecting someone’s dignity — are meaningful forms of resistance that reveal the enduring strength of love over extraction.

This episode is another informal, more reflective offering. Rather than an investigation or a philosophical / theological argument, it’s a meditation on what it feels like to move through ordinary life under authoritarian conditions — when even small, domestic tasks take on emotional and political weight. I reflect on the feeling of “doing laundry under authoritarian conditions,” and the thoughts and feelings that surfaced while navigating cold weather and exhaustion.

From there, the episode opens into a reflection on queer and trans survival, liberation, and the spiritual depth of the transgender journey. It considers how small rituals, endurance, and attention to the body can become sites of resistance and meaning — and how trans life, even in its quietest moments, carries a sacred power that refuses erasure.

With national attention focused on ICE actions and events in Minneapolis—and amid a moment when many people’s emotional and intellectual bandwidth is stretched thin—this episode takes a simpler, more informal format. Recorded solo and without a guest, it slows the pace while remaining grounded in research and analysis, making space to think carefully about how language, power, and morality intersect in times of crisis.

The episode centers on bothsidesism, with particular attention to how appeals to balance, civility, and “religious liberty” are used to construct false equivalence in contexts of state violence. Drawing on recent media coverage and Catholic leadership responses, it examines how unequal actors and harms are rhetorically flattened into narratives about “division on all sides,” obscuring responsibility and legitimizing existing power structures. Titled Bothsidesism Is a Moral Failure, the episode offers not a provocation but a diagnosis: when neutrality ignores power, refusing false equivalence becomes an act of discernment rather than extremism.

Learn more about my work at: https://maxwellkuzma.substack.com/