Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
Father Don Wolf, a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, offers a Catholic perspective on the issues confronting each person today.
Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
My Advice to the Pope | July 6, 2025
In this episode, Father Wolf explores how the Catholic Church is both universal and completely present in each local parish community, challenging us to reclaim our missionary identity for spiritual renewal and growth.
• The Church isn't just a compilation of individual churches functioning like organs in a body
• Each local parish is the complete Church in itself while simultaneously being part of the whole
• Our challenges in Oklahoma mirror those faced by the Church globally
• The Cursillo movement demonstrates how authentic enthusiasm can spread the faith naturally
• Every diocese should identify specific missionary focuses both locally and globally
• We shouldn't wait until we have "enough" resources to begin missionary outreach
• Father Wolf suggests prison ministry locally and supporting international parishes like Qatar's
If there's a world dying outside our windows, wouldn't it be great to be the ones to give it life?
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Father 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.
This is Living Catholic with Father Don Wolfe. This show deals with living the Catholic faith in our time, discovering God's presence in our lives and finding hope in His Word. And now your host, father Don Wolfe.
Speaker 2:Welcome Oklahoma to Living Catholic Father Don Wolfe, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Oklahoma City and rector of the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother. A couple of weeks ago, following the election of the new pope, someone asked me what recommendations I'd give to him as he began his new pontificate. I hadn't thought to imagine myself offering the pontiff any advice, nor did I think I'd have a chance to do so, especially since he's getting lots of it from all over the world. I mean, just look at the Catholic press. Everyone seems to have taken the chance to let their readers know what the Pope ought to be doing from this moment on. I didn't think offering any further thoughts would be that helpful, but it was an intriguing thought experiment and it caused my imagination to light up for just a moment. My first response was to joke with the person who spoke to me. I told him that when Pope Leo comes to Oklahoma City to visit the shrine for the canonization of Blessed Stanley, and when we're in the sacristy together, I'd offer him my thoughts privately. After all, we're the same age. I mean exactly. We were born on exactly the same day and he went to the seminary only two years after I did and was ordained a year after I was. I have some leverage to offer him my observations and the fruit of my experience. I'm sure he'd be hungry to listen to all my deep thoughts about the life of the church and what he ought to be doing as the vicar of Christ. After all, I love it so much when people tell me what he ought to be doing as the vicar of Christ After all. I love it so much when people tell me what I ought to be doing as the pastor of Sacred Heart and the rector of the shrine. I mean, who doesn't love unsolicited advice in making their lives better and their jobs more fruitful?
Speaker 2:But upon reflection, my second thought was to ponder what I would say if somehow given the chance to reflect with the Holy Father about the state of the church. It's not an off-base question. In fact, we pastors should all be wondering what the church needs and how we should be directing our ministry in the direction of fulfilling those needs among us. We are the church after all. Clearly, we're not the whole church. What goes on at Sacred Heart isn't the entire experience of the Church of Jesus Christ throughout the world, but it is the church here in South Oklahoma City which is the Catholic Church throughout the world. The word Catholic comes from the Greek, which means part of the whole, that is to say, what is here is part of the entire church everywhere. That makes what happens here a portion of what happens everywhere. We have an experience of the whole church right here in South Oklahoma City that is legitimate and complete in its own way as any part of the Catholic church, anywhere and in all time.
Speaker 2:So what we have to say about what the church is or how it should be acting isn't drawn out of thin air. As long as it comes from our reality and our experience, it is part of the church, universal, but you know more than that. Our life of the church is real life, the real church all in itself. Here we could consider the church to be something like a whole body with different organs making up the entire functioning structure. In this image we are like the lungs, while the church in Mexico is like the liver and the church in Africa is more like the nervous system or something like that.
Speaker 2:Each part of the church in every place has a part to play in the function of the church. It wouldn't be a complete body unless everyone everywhere was functioning and operating according to the needs and structures of the whole body. We are all one, which means we all function together and operate together, which is compelling as a metaphor, it's one we use all the time and it's good enough to make sense out of our particular history and place in the life of Catholic history and presence, but it's not really a good picture of what the church really is supposed to be. If we think of ourselves as organs, then if we fail, the whole body fails. Unless each organ functions at top condition, the whole body will be diseased or disabled. Functions at top condition, the whole body will be diseased or disabled. In fact, one small organ we can hardly identify or recognize, like, say, the pancreas, for example, if it's not working right, can bring the whole body to a stop. When everyone everywhere is working well and all is going right, then the church is robust and healthy and prospering. But have something happen and suddenly, even though things are right enough in every other organ, the body is failing. And so this image isn't quite adequate to the history of the church or to its actual operation. No, the church isn't just a compilation of individual churches, all acting on their own in a giant communal aggregation of functions and processes, each with its own place and function. We're not organs in the body. The truth is, the church is whole in each place and functions as the body of Christ in its place and time. So the church in the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City is the church of Jesus Christ, founded and instantiated, complete and graced Catholic. We're part of the whole because we embody the whole church here as well as being part of the church in its entirety.
Speaker 2:Think about it. Were this not the case, then we'd be justified in saying that the real church is somewhere else or someplace else. If only we'd go there. If Oklahoma City wasn't the church whole and entire, then we could go to Kansas City and perhaps find it there. Or maybe Denver or Kinshasa or Berlin or Guadalajara or Chickasha. The church would be there, or Guadalajara or Chickasha. The church would be there. Here it would simply be a shadow of it or a shell of what it had been or a seed of what it could be. What it is to be would be somewhere else. Of course, we'd always say that the best version of it would be over there, or the ideal expression of the church for our age would be over here compared to over there or whatever.
Speaker 2:What would happen is that the church would become fragmented and eventually torn apart, not a part of the whole. This sounds a little odd, since we live in an international community these days and it's easy for us to travel and experience the world in its complications and its peculiarities. College students can go to Rome or Rio for spring break. High school students can spend a week in Paris if they want, or go down to Mexico City for a student trip if it's on the syllabus. And in seeing all these places it's easy for us to be aware of the differences in flavor and emphasis, of how people get along and how life works for them. Oddly, as life has become more and more linked together in the ease of transportation and communication, it's easier and easier for us to imagine that our experiences are less and less integral and more and more fragmented. It's not demonic, it's just incomplete. We can go to Mass here at home and think it's not the same as the lively music and singing we hear when we were in that little farm village outside of Warsaw, or when we go to evening prayer at the cathedral. People don't sing along like they did in that suburb in Mexico City. We can imagine that once we get the parishioners in South Oklahoma City to open up a soup kitchen like the ones the people at the parish in the south of Marseilles has, then we'll be really living the life of the church. But either the church is here and it's alive in itself and is the encounter with Christ and the presence of Christ, or it's not. And if it's not, then it's not the church.
Speaker 2:Think of an image like a fractal, that's a mathematic detail in which a geometric shape repeats itself so that at any place in the larger shape you can see the smaller shape. It would be like looking at, say, a picture of George Washington made up of all manner of smaller shapes, which were themselves made up of smaller and smaller shapes. Anytime you looked at the larger picture and then got out a magnifying glass, you see the shape of George Washington, no matter how far down you looked. That's what the church is like. It's the church made up of churches that are all the church in themselves, up of churches that are all the church in themselves. Everywhere the church is Catholic and it makes for the Catholic church in detail and all complete. So saying all this is to say that, while I have my own experience of the church here in Oklahoma, and we have our peculiar history and our own heroes and exemplars. We are ourselves ourselves, the Catholic Church, and what happens to us is what happens across the world. The challenges we face are the problems and anxieties provoking the Catholic Church everywhere. Now, true, these may not be to the same degree or in the same way, but we live the life of the Church by our own lights and in our own measure here, and we share this with the church throughout the world.
Speaker 2:This came home to me during my sabbatical year in 2021, when I was in Guatemala. I spent about a month in Quetzaltenango, a town along the coast of south-central Guatemala, one of the very old regional capitals that also had a regional campus of the major Guatemalan university. Quetzaltenango is famous for its indigenous culture and language, as well as its deep roots in the preservation of the native practices there. It wasn't unusual to run into men and women all over the city dressed in their traditional clothes, speaking one of the Mayan languages that had echoed on those streets for thousands of years. The cathedral in town there is a place that hosts the particular contributions of the people to the worship and belief there. At the same time, all over the city there were advertisements for university clubs promoting transgenderism and gay marriage. That is to say, what's present anywhere in Oklahoma is present there.
Speaker 2:It's all the more the case once we remember that anybody with a smartphone, no matter how remote or traditional or ignorant or compartmentalized he might be, that person has access to everything we can look up on the internet, same as us. The church is the same, with the same challenges and opportunities everywhere. Which is why, if I had the chance to speak to the Pope about what we ought to be doing, I'd feel some confidence in being able to inform him about his job. If I had that moment in the sacristy, I'd love to tell him that I think we ought to be outspreading the message of the church, that I think we ought to be outspreading the message of the church. I know that doesn't sound very revolutionary or very informative. A thousand people have said it over the years and it hasn't had much effect, at least not a lot that I've seen. So I'd have to add some nuance to the suggestion. But the suggestion remains. We need to be a missionary church and for the most part, we're not.
Speaker 2:Part of this suggestion comes from my experience with the Curcio movement. This movement came to Oklahoma in 1979 with the first Curcio that was held in Anadarko. It spread out from there and over the last 46 years has been functioning in Oklahoma both in English and in Spanish, and now is moving into Korean and Vietnamese. Thousands of people have been involved, with hundreds and hundreds engaged in leadership and formation. It's been the most influential of all of the lay movements of the church throughout the United States and that reputation has been sustained here in Oklahoma. I became part of the movement in 1981, just before I was ordained to the priesthood. I've had the opportunity to be a part of the leadership and the teamwork for hundreds of Cursillo weekends over these years. It's been an unstinted blessing for me, as it has for those thousands of people who have experienced it here. And, in case you're wondering, it is still functioning here in Oklahoma. And in case you're wondering, it is still functioning here in Oklahoma.
Speaker 2:One essential part of the Curcio experience is the invitation that those who participate extend to other people. It's a powerful movement that introduces its participants to the life of the faith and provides them with a method of growing in their experience of faithful living, as well as deepening their life of encounter with Christ, full living, as well as deepening their life of encounter with Christ. In this process, there is a spontaneous and deeply authentic desire on the part of those who participate to invite others to share it with them. To be animated and inspired to bring others to this experience is part of the experience. It is electrifying to see so many who are moved so thoroughly and so deeply as to bring others to it. In fact, this rush to invite can be so overwhelming and so full of energy that we have to caution people not to be consumed by it. In place of begging them to go out and tell people what's happening to them, we have to ask them not to talk about it so exclusively or with such great emphasis. Oddly enough, one of the things we've had to help quiet down is the overwhelming enthusiasm so many people have had. The energy has been so high and the conviction so powerful. It's had the effect of distorting the whole message. We want people to be judicious about what they say and how they say it, so as not to share the enthusiasm too much, so as to cause people to miss the true heart of the experience. Imagine that we have to make sure people don't speak with too much enthusiasm.
Speaker 2:Of course, the church isn't a movement, and no movement encapsulates the entire church. Nobody's required to be a part of Curcio in order to be a good Catholic or an authentic believer, but this aspect of the movement is something we don't see in the concourse of our normal faith lives. We don't have people rush out of church and go and invite others to be a part of what they've taken part in. Have people rush out of church and go and invite others to be a part of what they've taken part in. Throwing away caution and letting down the boundaries is not usually a concern when it comes to the church, which is something we need to retrieve. We need to retrieve this enthusiasm.
Speaker 2:We do this by focusing on our role as a missionary church. We're here in order to spread the life of the church into the places where it needs to be present. Accepting responsibility for bringing the church to those in need of it is the job for all of us. It should be intentional. It should be written into the life of every one of us and in every one of our structures and decisions and operations. Us and in every one of our structures and decisions and operations. It is our identity. We should be able to see it everywhere, down to the smallest image we can see.
Speaker 2:As part of this expression of the mission, we should have a designated focus of our missionary activity. As a diocese, all of us together in Oklahoma should have a focused object of our concern, a place or an environment in which we all direct our concern to spread the gospel. While this is more complicated than simply picking a place and then deciding to adopt it as the object of our intention, unless we make a direct effort and an explicit object of our concern, our concern will simply evaporate. We should all be focused on our desire to invite, to sustain and to build. That should be written into what we do. In previous years, the Oklahoma mission to Guatemala was the object of our missionary energy. Following that, we have very much focused on the internal missionary effort to reach out to the Spanish-speaking in our midst, who are here among us and who are very much in need of our attention to be incorporated into the diocese. In both cases, we can see how much our efforts have abetted our faith lives and have made our experience of the church richer and deeper and more powerful. This is especially true compared to those dioceses where they have been hesitant to embrace the missionary call.
Speaker 2:Imagine Oklahoma without our history of self-sacrificial service in Central America or without our embrace of the Hispanic identity all over western Oklahoma. We'd be poorer and shallower had we chosen not to embrace our missionary call. And that's the number one challenge. If we don't identify ourselves outside of the boundaries of our everyday concerns, we're bound up with the niggling disagreements and the small measures of our lives. If we remain focused only on ourselves, what we need and what we want becomes so blurred and so minute we're unable to find any peace or satisfaction. Like any relationship, if there's no focus on anything beyond the interaction of the two persons, if there's no journey that they're a part of no project in their lives except their lives, then there will never be any peace between them or any satisfaction with them.
Speaker 2:The purpose of relationship is to transcend the personal, after all, and this happens when each person is part of a larger purpose than the self. It's the same with any institution or any church. Unless we're focused beyond ourselves, we wither. Mission has to become our purpose Because it is an imperative. We have to get beyond the presumption that we can only attend to it when we've settled everything or gotten everything taken care of first. By that measure, we'd never be ready and never be prepared to take on anything outside of ourselves. If we waited until we have enough money or personnel or time, and when we did have enough we'd finally act, we'd never act, after all. When was the last time you sat down and said I have enough of everything, so now I'm free to do as I ought? And my guess is never. So it would be for the church.
Speaker 2:A rough analogy would be what we've seen concerning child rearing in the US. In the old days, as my father used to say, people got married and then they had kids. In our day and time, people get married and after they've been together for a while, when they've built some wealth and stability, when they've become comfortable with themselves and their lives together, then they opt to have kids. Children are regarded as the reward of a life well-lived and well-provided for. In previous times, children were thought of and accepted as the first fruits of relationship and commitment. In the first point of view they're prizes, in the second they're gifts. This change has not produced more stable families or more well-formed children.
Speaker 2:The church, in my estimation, needs to accept the missionary part of its life. Think of what our lives would be like were we to decide, as a diocese, on where our energy and resources should be directed outside of ourselves. Of course we'd keep the buildings and keep our programs we have for our people, but we would be animated not by maintenance and sustainability but by the vision of cultivating and harvesting. The fruit of our faithfulness would be invested in increase and growth, and we wouldn't be satisfied until we have realized it in everything that we did. That would be the catalyst to reanimate just about every part of what we do. Of course, it would require sacrifice and discernment. We might even have to take up our crosses in order to serve the Lord in this manner, but it would be our gift to the world and the gospel's gift to us. Oh, I have some other suggestions about the hot issues with regard to liturgical life and seminarians and adult formation and how we all spend money. I don't know of a pastor anywhere in the world that doesn't have strong opinions about these things.
Speaker 2:Speaking of a universal church mirrored in the experience of the church here and now, but a premier focus on our missionary responsibility that would be my message to the Pope. He was part of a missionary order. After all, he spent his time in Latin America as a missionary to the church there as they lived out their needs and benefited from his contribution. I think he would have thought a lot about this suggestion. Who knows, maybe he'll put the machinery in motion to begin to make it happen. Perhaps, as in the thought of the author Elie Wiesel, the mere fact of thinking it, writing it down and talking about it, even in an obscure venue like this one, helps to bring it about. I hope such a thing might be true. And one more thing I'm the first to admit that I don't know the pressures and difficulties the Pope has to endure. I also am no expert when it comes to the church in Africa or Latin America. I can hardly speak with authority about the church in Kansas, but I do know the church here in Oklahoma, and it is a mirror of the church in the rest of the world.
Speaker 2:This is what I'd like to see here. How about you? In fact, I think we should have two sides to our missionary outreach. We should focus on the empty spaces and blighted hearts right here my suggestion would be the prison system and our county jails and we should reach across the globe, to the places most in need of witness and hope. How about the largest parish in the world, in Qatar? But those are just my suggestions. What do you think? There's a world dying outside of our windows. Wouldn't it be great to be the ones to give it life Back in just a moment. Welcome back to our final segment Faith in Verse.
Speaker 2:We have a poem today called If Only, if only I could go back in time, if only to that one moment, if only now and then would align, if only I could gain consent, I'd have the life I dream of. I'd have all my mistakes smoothed. I'd have the life I've dreamed of. I'd have all my mistakes smoothed. I'd have deep, true love. I'd have life notched and grooved.
Speaker 2:Were it at all possible now, were it at the boundaries of hope, were it, what nature would allow, were it possible to pause and cope, wouldn't life be great and grand. Wouldn't life be always enormous. Wouldn't life be at present, at hand. Wouldn't life be more for us? So I say in my dreaming. So I say as the truth here lodges, so I say it's light here beaming. So I say all life its boundaries dodges, that's, if only Christ calls us all to the fullness of life. That's the message of the gospel that we have been chosen from the beginning to be a part of God's initiative to the whole world. I hope that in the weeks to come we can all explore what this means, as we explore what it means to be Living Catholic together.
Speaker 1:Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more, visit okcrorg.