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
Collar Chronicles: Balancing Pastoral Realities | July 20, 2025
In this episode, Father Wolf shares memorable encounters from parish ministry, reflecting on how these experiences taught him valuable lessons about pastoral care. Following in the tradition of Bishop Francis Clement Kelly's "Tales from the Rectory," these stories reveal the complex nature of living Catholic faith in today's world.
• A couple returning to the Church after 20 years abruptly leaves when Father Don explains that inability to attend Mass removes obligation
• The husband's insistence on rigid, black-and-white rules despite his own 20-year absence from Mass reveals how some need absolute certainty
• This encounter taught Father Don to provide deeper context when answering moral questions rather than simple yes/no responses
• Professional beggars targeting church-goers are discovered loading their signs into a new Mercedes after being asked to leave
• Pastoral wisdom requires balancing sincere charity with protection of parishioners from exploitation
• Experience brings necessary wisdom in ministry that seminary education alone cannot provide
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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. I'm Father Don Wolfe, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish and rector of the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother. The second bishop of Oklahoma City in Tulsa was Bishop Francis Clement Kelly. He'd been a notable presence of the church in the United States when he had been named to Oklahoma. A famous lecturer and all-about raconteur, he went on to author some 16 books while he was a bishop. He went on to author some 16 books while he was a bishop and this included a very interesting autobiography of his early life entitled the Bishop Jots it Down, and a history of the Mexican Revolution and the Cristero Wars entitled Blood-Drenched Altars.
Speaker 2:In fact, during the Great Depression, when the needs of the Church of Oklahoma far outstripped its income and the capacities of its people, bishop Kelly would spend all spring on the East Coast giving talks and lectures in order to raise the money necessary to run his diocese. He was, needless to say, an interesting man. One of his most popular books was called Tales from the Rectory. They were mostly little vignettes of encounters priests had in their parishes, little stories encapsulating the state of the faith and the role of priests in the work they did and the parishes where they lived. It was a book of a wry piety, a product of the age, filled with the lessons and admonitions about true belief and all that a true Catholic should believe and do, and so, in that, it was a book for its day. I don't think a book like his would be as popular today if it should contain the same type of stories and the same conclusions. The bishop was ready to draw from the lessons contained therein, but the concept remains compelling. What would be more interesting than a collection of tales from the rectory? Certainly, the world continues to come to the parish, and those who arrive there make for interesting encounters.
Speaker 2:I've had no end of moments in which the paradoxes of life and belief have disclosed themselves to me in the voices and faces of those who've been present in the parishes I've served. So I thought I'd record a few of them. Maybe I'll put together a whole book someday, but for now I'll begin with a couple of stories that have always stuck in my memory, and in this I don't claim any exclusivity. Most of the priests I know could spend, oh a week telling stories about what they've seen and the people they've talked to, and keep everyone entertained by them. These, the ones I tell, are simply the ones I've run into. Just as Bishop Kelly wasn't the only storyteller at the diocese at this time, so I don't claim to be the only one here at my time.
Speaker 2:So to begin, it was time to put in an appearance. You might think the pastor of a parish would compel my presence just about all the time, but you'd be wrong. There are times in which absence can be the most intriguing and the most helpful attribute of the pastor's role. We'd found that absence was important for a time, but now it was time for me to be present. So I came over to the parish hall at about 7.30 pm and greeted the couple who were present there. They'd arrived at 7 o'clock and had sat with the leader of the group for half an hour getting ready for the class that we were going to have. They'd been a part of the Catholics Coming Home semester we were hosting in the parish and they were anxious to get on with the process. I could tell that as I came into the room and sat down with them across the table. Our leader I'll call her Mrs Hermes began the conversation. She said this is James and Dolly Smith those are pseudonyms for this story and we've been meeting these last three weeks They've been away from the church. For what is it? She turned to them 20 years and they've decided it's time to come back to church. We're so happy to have them with us Now. This was the normal procedure we had adopted.
Speaker 2:After advertising at the beginning of the calendar year and at the beginning of the school year we hosted two separate semesters of our process to invite people to come back to the practice of the faith. It was a well established program in the parish and it had been productive, a real asset to us. Over the years a good number of people had come back to Mass. Some of them had become the most active parishioners in the whole parish. It was a good program.
Speaker 2:We found that most of the time the folks who were absent from the pews didn't know how to find their way back In their minds. They thought they'd have some kind of target on their backs as they walked in. They'd be the object of the thoughts and condemnation of all of those who were there. The truth was that most everyone was glad to see them back, even if the break had been for decades, that is, if those who were there even knew them as former parishioners. Like so many of us, the thoughts outpaced the reality of things, and what those people imagined of other people's thoughts in no way matched up with what those others were really thinking.
Speaker 2:So part of our invitation was to give them a way to meet Mrs Hermes, to get to know her and to allow her to be the open doorway back to Mass. And who could be better than her? She had lapsed in the practice of the faith, piling up the troubles of her families with the frequent moving around the country with her husband's job, until she looked up one day and realized it had been 10 years since she'd been to Mass. She found her way back and decided she wanted to help others do the same, and her dedication to the program was fantastic. As we've said over and over again, echoing what St Pope Paul VI said, he said the world tires of teachers, it longs for witnesses, and Mrs Hermes was that witness for us when she spoke her words, struck with power, there at the end of the table she sat with her kindly eyes inviting me to talk with the new couple I was to meet Now.
Speaker 2:This was a sparse crowd. The usual crowd at each semester was 10 people or more, but the numbers didn't matter. It was the same invitation to be a part of the same experience. This is Father Wolfe, she said. He's been the pastor of our parish for the last five years and he's happy to be here tonight to meet you. As you know, we always invite those who are coming home to begin our process here in the parish hall, just so that all of us can have a chance to meet and to get to know one another. Sometimes, you know, the people who've been away have had some real conflict with their pastor and have hard feelings. We want to be sure everyone feels welcome here in this space before they meet with the pastor. So we've invited Father Wolf over to meet you and to ask and to answer any questions you might have. Lots of times we don't have a chance to spend much time one-on-one with somebody who can fill us in on what we're uncertain about or what we'd like to know, and because of that it's not uncommon for people to have nagging questions about church teaching or the decisions of the pastors in the past, or even just basic things about the faith that they've never been able to clear up. So I've invited Father Wolfe to be here with us this evening. I know he'll be happy to answer any concern you might have.
Speaker 2:And it was true, I was happy to be there. When I left the seminary I imagined I had all the answers to all of the questions anybody could pose. It was incomprehensible to me that somebody might opt for falsity in the faith or just not believe at all because they didn't know the right answer to whatever question they might have. Come up with a question, I had the answer. Of course, I eventually found that most people never even got to asking a question. Having an answer was a lot less important in the face of mute, unreflective puzzlement, which is what most people had. So I toned down my enthusiasm over the years, my enthusiasm for vanquishing the unanswered, and I spent more of my time trying to create the environment in which belief is experienced and then practiced, not just talked about and considered.
Speaker 2:The apostles were, after all, fishermen, not college professors. They'd met the Lord, they hadn't studied the catechism, but in all of that I still wanted to be able to address the concerns that people had. Surprisingly, at least to me, most of those coming back didn't have any particular concerns or risable notions. They hadn't rebelled at the position of the church in some contemporary matter and they hadn't quit in a moment of anger or exasperation at the hands of some cruel pastor. Most of the time, as they described it, they'd miss Mass one day and the next day they looked up it had been 20 years. They'd miss Mass one day and the next day they looked up it had been 20 years, but still I was there to be the voice of the church for them, to be the chance to address authority and to clear the air for them, no matter their own story or no matter their anxiety. I could speak in the name of the church, which was important. Any questions for Father? Mrs Hermes wanted the session to go well. So far, the couple hadn't said anything. Now's your chance. You can ask him anything you like. No takers. Well, I have a question then, father.
Speaker 2:Last week my husband and I were visiting his brother. We were in southern Missouri, in a small town. On Sunday morning we began looking for a church to go to, but there weren't any in the area. After a couple of phone calls, we decided we just weren't able to make it to Mass. Did we commit a sin? Should we have done something different? Now, that was a good question, although I have to confess that I had hope for something a little more far-reaching, something at the heart of the philosophical or theological roots of the faith. If you trace those into the soil you can quite easily get to the heart of the anxieties people have about God and belief and goodness and life.
Speaker 2:A question about Mass on Sunday seemed pretty small. So I said if you can't go to Mass, you can't go. I think that sums it up. Of course we're all summoned to fulfill the commandment to make the Lord's Day holy, but if you can't go, you can't. I thought that summed things up pretty well. And then the response. The husband of the couple first responded what do you mean? They didn't have to go to mass. It was Sunday. They had to go.
Speaker 2:Not to go is a mortal sin. Are you excusing a mortal sin? What kind of priest are you? He asked. That took me by surprise. Didn't you hear her? I told she's 75 years old, she's not a child of 12. When she tells me they couldn't go, it's because they couldn't. That means not able to. When you're not able to fulfill the law, the law is not binding. Anyone can convince himself into believing that no law applies to him, sure, but someone who does, that's just fooling himself. However, when a person analyzes her situation and decides that it truly is not possible to fulfill the expectations of the law, she's not bound by the law. That's part of the teaching of the church. I'm not making that up. Well, he said I can't accept that. Either she has to go to church or she doesn't. If she doesn't go, then it's a sin, no matter the circumstances. What kind of place is this where you teach people they don't have to obey the law. Either it's a law or it isn't. And if it doesn't apply, we're leaving. And they both got up and left out the door out of the parish, never to return.
Speaker 2:This was a couple who hadn't been to Mass in 20 years, angry because their facilitator confessed she'd been unable to find a Mass to go to on Sunday morning in one of the sparest dioceses in the country. Now anyone can decide to do anything he wants. It wasn't that he decided he wasn't going to come back to church with some wishy-washy pastor in charge who didn't treat every situation as an automatic mortal sin. It was the look of anger on futility and futility on his face that bothered me. He was furious at me for telling him there might be an excuse for not being able to fulfill the church's expectation. Now there are all manner of psychological interpretations available to explain his actions, I suppose, but he had a need to hear and understand. Only in black and white, I guess. Hear and obey those seem to be the words he needed to hear. No excuses, no explanations, no complications. Nothing else need apply. Hear and obey, even if it convicted everything he had done in the last 20 years.
Speaker 2:Now, law means a lot to a lot of people. We've seen that writ large in our age, especially in the changes we've undergone in the last generation. My grandmothers were just like this man. Every expectation in the name of the church was without qualification and without question. To be faithful meant to be obedient in every measure, in every way, and certainly that made life simpler for them than for others. It's funny.
Speaker 2:Things changed in my generation as we began deepening our understanding of church life and practice. Our teachers began to explain that absolute obedience is not always a virtue, that there are other means of understanding and other matters of concern besides simply hearing and doing. When they explained things this way, what people often heard, though, was that nothing matters. Any excuse and any justification could excuse any obligation they said to themselves. And suddenly, while our parents were firmly compelled to mass on Sunday, abstinence on Friday and fasting during Lent because it was the law, my generation felt compelled by nothing except our remembrance that there could be an excuse for not doing those things. What never seemed to have penetrated to us was the possibility that there was more to the church's expectation than simply doing or not doing what it was all for, what we were being formed into, what our lives were to become. Those questions seemed never to have penetrated. Our parents obeyed, we obfuscated. So I understood my frustrated guest. What he heard was laws don't matter. If someone didn't do what she was supposed to do and there was no condemnation, then there was no law. That was his attitude. He couldn't hear anything else, even a reasoned explanation why fulfilling the law was not possible.
Speaker 2:I don't know what that couple did concerning their own absence. Over the decades that I know of, they were never able to find their way back through the doors of the church. I was pastor for five years there more that I know of. They were never able to find their way back through the doors of the church. I was pastor for five years there more and I never saw or heard from them again. Their abruptness caused me to change the way I answered, especially when the questions asked of me touched on morality and, let's face it, almost all of them do. I don't answer yes or no right away, even if the question is framed that way. I try to ask other questions, other ways of finding out what the question means and what the answer will mean for the one who's asking it. It's not to escape the answer, but so that the answer can be hung on a framework of understanding rather than floating free in a space that they can't respond to. When Mrs Hermes asked me her simple question, I thought it would be a yes or no answer and I didn't take the time it deserved to answer it more deeply. It cost me that couple.
Speaker 2:The pastoral life is like that, where all the citizens of the moments and when the moments passed were not able to go back and we become a foreigner to the moment. The best we can do sometimes is to be prepared to cross the border up ahead with a better grasp of the language necessary for the moments to come. And another story Every priest has to learn to deal with those who come asking for help. It's part of our vocation. We're the locus of the possibilities, of charity and the promise of attention. No priest is exempt from the expectations of others.
Speaker 2:One Saturday evening, just before Mass, I walked from the confessional to the front doors of the church to find two men and two women, and the women holding small children, and they were begging there. They held signs asking for help. Now our church isn't on the street. They had to walk in from the sidewalk and up the steps and then go in through the doors to meet the parishioners as they came for Mass. Help us. The sign said we need money for food, and they were being helped. Lots of people, you know, just passed them by.
Speaker 2:Of course, beggars on our streets and intersections have become as ubiquitous in our age as billboards. They seem to be everywhere asking for everything, and so it's easy to decide not to respond. And many people didn't. But many did. They saw the signs, looked at the kids and dug into their pockets to slip them a note or two. But these people were people I had seen before. In fact, the leader of the group had been at the parish before One time. On Sunday morning he and another group of people he had brought over, had come into the parish hall to beg in the same way, telling people that they were looking for help. The parish hall to beg in the same way, telling people that they were looking for help, and in their words they wanted gift cards, gift cards. I told them at that time they had to leave and they resisted At my continued insistence, including seeing them go out of the hall and to the van they'd driven up in until they left the premises. Until I did that, they didn't leave. I had to do all that in order to get them to leave and it had been a while until they came back and they chose that particular Saturday evening to come back.
Speaker 2:Now I become infuriated at the professional beggar, which is what these people were. I have no respect for them, except to be a little amused and a bit admiring of their brazenness. They are humble and they approach with downcast eyes until the moment you tell them to stop or that they have to leave, and they suddenly become harsh, insistent and judgmental. In fact they become really nasty. That's been my experience Standing there at the entrance. I told them you have to leave now. You're not welcome here, you have to go. I'm the pastor, this is my property and you can't stay on my property. They gathered up their signs and slowly made their way down the steps.
Speaker 2:Their leader, whom I had dealt with before, turned to me. He said you're not much of a pastor. You should be kind to us and here you're kicking us out of the church. You should be ashamed of yourself. I'm embarrassed for you.
Speaker 2:As I said, pastors have to learn what to do and how to act in the face of those who would demand charity. I'd passed the barrier of embarrassment a long time ago when dealing with those whose shamelessness is unbounded. Get out and stay out. I told him as I followed him down the steps and out into the parking lot and onto the sidewalk. You don't have to stalk us, we're leaving. He said this is my property. I told it, but I dealt with them before. Unless you are relentless in the face of relentlessness, they would be back in a moment. I had to celebrate Mass in a few minutes, which they knew. They'd be back on the front steps as soon as I walked out onto the altar if I didn't make sure they left the property. So they walked onto the sidewalk and then walked on down the street. So I walked back to the front steps of the church and then saw them turn to walk to the back parking lot behind the church, which aroused my curiosity, wondering why they'd go back there, since there was no exit for them there. So I went into the church, went down the connecting hallway to the parish hall and then looked out of the window of the kitchen facing the back parking lot. And there they were, the six of them the two men, the two women and the children with them, getting into a white Mercedes sedan brand new, putting their signs in the trunk and fitting everyone into the seats. And when they were in place they started up and drove away.
Speaker 2:Now I hurry to affirm this is not an urban legend. I saw this with my own eyes. If I'd been closer I could have gotten the tag number on the car, but I wasn't able to. Now this isn't a story about not giving and it's not a story about being suspicious. It's a story about being careful and it's a reminder that with experience should come wisdom, because sin is everywhere and exploitation and subterfuge and dishonesty they are the norm. Not only that, charity doesn't cancel out ignorance or excuse sincerity. That's what pastors have to learn. It's our job to protect our sheep. If we don't, who will so? When somebody begs, our first response isn't always to simply give. Our first response has to at least have some contact with the wisdom that comes from our experience, and our experience has to come from that which we have actually seen and what we know Back in just a moment.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to our final segment Faith in Verse. We have a poem today called my Days. What would my days be like if, upon awakening, I found I had regressed, gone back to an earlier time for another time around, to open my eyes and see the familiar places that now occupy my past, say hello again to voices that in other days had held me fast? Would I set my sights on the prizes of life I had foresworn? Knowing all these, I could blaze those pathways, now for me worn, or perhaps choose the hidden ways, now out of the sight of all, or pursue the muses now.
Speaker 2:I had not then the time to call. I could make my days a grand success, win prizes in all things. My thoughts and plans, with such foreknowledge, could be transforming. I'd be not just celebrated and recognized. Finally, I could contribute to the human spirit, proceed mindfully. But were this change to happen. If it became my fiery boast, how would it not become but a waking dream, a haunting ghost threatening as dawn approached to evaporate in the light? All new measured and celebrated would disappear in fright and turn to ashes at the sight of sunlight. A vampire's fate to live alone in darkness, risen from the casket of times. Sealed gate. That's my days invitation to be living Catholic is the invitation to have the closest possible encounter that we have with the life of the faith, which, more than anything else, which we always forget, is itself a life to be in contact with the energies and the dynamism that propels ourselves, our lives in the image of Christ. I hope that in the weeks to come we have a chance to do that together the image of Christ.
Speaker 1:I hope that in the weeks to come we have a chance to do that together. Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more, visit okcrorg.