Matt Fradd’s decision to bring Pints with Aquinas to The Daily Wire is a major shift within conservative Catholic media in recent years. In this episode, we break down why this move matters, how it reshapes the landscape of Catholic commentary online, and what it reveals about the tightening relationship between right-wing political media and religious influencers. We look at how Fradd’s huge audience, mostly young men, will now be funneled into a network built on outrage cycles.
We also discuss why this shift doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Vulnerable young men — already wrestling with fear, confusion, isolation, and rigid expectations around masculinity — are being offered a pipeline that promises confidence, clarity, and belonging, but at the cost of empathy and critical thinking. When conservative Catholic creators merge their platforms with political media machines, the result is a powerful echo chamber that amplifies misogyny, anti-LGBTQ extremism, and authoritarian worldviews. This episode unpacks the mechanics behind that pipeline, the risks it poses, and what it means for the future of Catholic digital culture.
Read our essays unpacking topics like these and more on Substack: https://maxwellkuzma.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips
In this episode of Whiplash, Max and Emma keep the Halloween spirit alive by sharing their favorite costumes, movie memories, and stories from Halloweens past—while reflecting on the deeper meaning of this season for queer and trans Catholics. As the veil thins and the world turns toward remembrance, they explore how Halloween has long been a space of liberation for queer people: a night to step into authenticity, to play with identity, and to honor those who came before.
Together, they turn toward the queer and trans ancestors whose courage, creativity, and love shaped the freedoms we have today. From medieval mystics to modern activists, these are the saints and storytellers who built a lineage of joy and resistance within and beyond the Church. Join Max and Emma as they reflect on what queer ancestry means to them personally—and how remembering our ancestors can help us imagine more inclusive, embodied, and hopeful queer futures.
Queer Catholic history isn’t a closed book—it’s still being written in every act of courage, faith, and community. For more than fifty years, DignityUSA has been at the heart of that story, standing as one of the earliest and most enduring organizations advocating for LGBTQ+ Catholics.
In this episode, Emma sits down with Marianne Duddy-Burke, Executive Director of DignityUSA, to reflect on the organization’s legacy, the ongoing struggle for full inclusion in the Church, and the sacred, often slow work of building dignity from the ground up.
As we continue celebrating LGBTQ History Month, we’re turning toward the power of art—how it allows queer people of faith to see ourselves reflected in the sacred. This week, Max speaks with Libby, a young artist and one of the youngest attendees at the recent LGBTQ pilgrimage in Rome. Building on our earlier conversation with Dani from @andhersaints, this episode explores how art becomes a form of advocacy and prayer—a way for queer people to claim space within traditions that have often excluded us.
Libby’s work draws deeply from Byzantine iconography and the long tradition of sacred art, while also experimenting with digital media to reimagine religious symbolism through a queer lens. In conversation, she and Max reflect on how creativity can open new doors in the Church—how art becomes a language of faith, reclamation, and hope. You can see some of Libby’s work on Instagram at @kibbyer, including a moving comic about why she’s both queer and Catholic.
In this episode of Whiplash, Max and Emma speak with Dr. Jason Steidl Jack, theologian, historian, and author of LGBTQ Catholic Ministry: Past and Present. Jason traces the long and often overlooked history of queer Catholic ministry in the United States — from early communities like DignityUSA to today’s ongoing efforts to build spaces of belonging within and beyond the Church. He reflects on his own journey from evangelical roots to Catholicism, and the movement from loneliness to communion through the witness of queer saints, past and present.
Together, they explore what it means to build bridges that don’t demand assimilation, how queer Catholics have reshaped the Church through resilience and love, and why recovering diverse stories — including those of trans Catholics, queer women, and people of color — is essential to imagining a more just and joyful Church.
What happens when queerness meets fundamentalist religion? This week on Whiplash, we sit down with Willow, an intersex trans person, thinker, and survivor of Christian and Catholic fundamentalism, to explore how queerness can become a way of making meaning inside systems that were never built to hold us.
Together, we reflect on how queerness transforms us — how it redefines faith, community, and the very idea of holiness. As we begin LGBTQ History Month, we’re grounding ourselves in that transformative power: the creativity, solidarity, and courage that queer people have always carried, even in the most constraining spaces.
Beneath the surface of Catholic history in America lies a story too often ignored: the deep entanglement of white Catholic identity with racism. In this episode, Maureen O’Connell, author and scholar of Catholic social ethics, helps us uncover that history through her groundbreaking book Undoing the Knots, which traces five generations of her own family in Philadelphia to reveal how Catholic belonging was built alongside systems of exclusion and anti-Blackness.
Together, we explore how assimilation became both a survival strategy and a weapon of control, how these dynamics still echo in today’s Catholic nationalism and high-control movements, and what it takes to face this history without turning away. This is a conversation about reckoning—not for the sake of shame, but for the sake of solidarity, clarity, and the possibility of a more honest Catholic future.
For more: https://maxwellkuzma.substack.com/
What if the “insider knowledge” driving today’s far-right movements isn’t Christian at all? Dr. Joan Braune joins us to expose how figures like Steve Bannon twist ancient Roman myths about history into pseudo-intellectual narratives of power. These ideas get passed off as “tradition,” but as Joan shows, they’re not Catholic, not Christian—and they’re fueling the dangerous rise of fascism and Christian nationalism in America today.
Together, we unpack how fascism operates not as a fringe phenomenon but as a social movement deeply tied to existing power structures. Joan explains why it can’t be defeated through policing or elections alone, but only through strong, organized resistance. Along the way, we connect her analysis to our own work on High Control Catholicism and the ways authoritarian religion manipulates communities under the guise of faith.
Pope Leo’s first four months have been marked by gestures that many LGBTQ Catholics never thought they’d see in their lifetimes. From a historic pilgrimage of LGBTQ faithful into Rome—welcomed after decades of exclusion—to his private meeting with Fr. James Martin, the new pope has signaled continuity with Francis’s posture of welcome. For communities once silenced or cast out, these moments carry deep symbolic weight.
Yet symbols don’t resolve the tension between hope, history, and hesitation. What do these early moves really mean for the future of LGBTQ Catholics in the Church? Is Pope Leo laying the groundwork for lasting change, or offering temporary gestures within unchanged structures? In this episode, Max and Emma explore the history behind these events, the meaning they carry for queer Catholics today, and the questions that remain about the road ahead.
In this episode of Whiplash with Maxwell Kuzma, we dive into purity culture and the hold it continues to have in American Christianity. While many remember it through 1990s evangelical movements like abstinence pledges and purity rings, purity culture’s influence stretches far beyond that moment. It shapes how churches and communities regulate sexuality, enforce rigid gender roles, and equate worthiness with “purity”—and its legacy continues to inform modern politics, education, and law.
To accompany this conversation, Emma and I co-wrote an essay that traces purity culture’s larger history, from its roots in early America to its present-day impact on queer and trans lives. We look at how these high-control systems use sexuality as a tool of power and exclusion, and what it means to imagine something better. You can read the full essay on Substack. https://open.substack.com/pub/maxwellkuzma/p/inside-the-high-control-world-of?r=2ja4k7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
This week on Whiplash, Jenn Morson joins us to talk about Franciscan University—a place both Max and Jenn attended. While many remember friendly friars and a vibrant campus life, the university also fostered a culture of control, secrecy, and conformity that allowed harm to persist. Jenn has been a leading voice reporting on sexual abuse allegations at Franciscan, including work for the National Catholic Reporter, documenting how some students were manipulated or exploited within systems that appeared nurturing.
Content Statement: Before listening, take a moment to prepare yourself. This episode includes discussions of sexual abuse, misconduct, harassment, and institutional failure. In our conversation, we explore how high-control structures shaped student life, the pressures to conform, and the lasting effects on survivors and alumni. These difficult stories are essential for understanding how authority and devotion can be misused, and why accountability matters.
In this episode, we reflect on what it means to engage ethically with stories of High Control Catholicism and religious trauma. As we’ve moved through this series, we’ve seen how easily personal testimony can be flattened into content for clicks, and how platforms often privilege certain voices over others. We share how we approach storytelling differently—by centering lived experience, collaborating with experts, and ensuring that survivors remain in control of their own narratives.
Ethical storytelling matters because the way we share stories shapes the future of advocacy. By being intentional about who we platform, creating accessible content, and naming the limits of our own expertise, we hope to build a model of storytelling rooted in dignity, reciprocity, and care. This episode is not a rulebook, but an invitation for others to reflect on how we can all engage our communities more responsibly.
In this episode, we sit down with journalist and author Gareth Gore to explore the hidden world of Opus Dei. From his beginnings as a financial reporter to uncovering a story that stretched far beyond banking, Gareth shares how Opus Dei’s secrecy, influence, and high-control practices have shaped both Catholic life and global politics. Together, we discuss the cult of personality around founder Josemaría Escrivá, the ways Opus Dei exerts control over its members, and how its reach extends into movements of Catholic nationalism and authoritarian politics in Spain and the United States.As queer Catholics reflecting on our ongoing series about High Control Catholicism, we found this conversation to be an important step in naming the structures of power and manipulation that too often go unchallenged. Instead of traditional show notes, we’ll be publishing a deep dive essay on Substack this Friday, August 22, continuing the conversation and expanding on themes from this episode.https://maxwellkuzma.substack.com/
This week’s episode is one of the harder ones we’ve recorded. We’re talking about conversion therapy — something that isn’t just a political talking point, but a lived reality for so many in our community. If this topic is too much for you right now, please take care of yourself and skip this one. Your wellbeing matters more than anything. But for those who can listen, thank you for holding space for a conversation that’s painful and deeply important.
We’re speaking with Dr. Lucas Wilson, a scholar and survivor, about the theology that fuels conversion therapy, the systems that keep it alive, and what life can look like after surviving it. This isn’t just history — right now, Republican lawmakers in Colorado and other states are working to make these harmful practices legal again. We believe staying informed is one way we protect each other. Thank you for being willing to face hard truths with us.
In this episode, we’re joined by Theo, the creator and host of Disordered: Responding to Catholic Teachings on Gender and Sexuality. Their podcast takes on the harmful narratives that many conservative Catholic voices promote about LGBTQ people—arguments that are often cloaked in the language of love and pastoral care, but ultimately rely on shame, fear, and pseudoscience. Episode by episode (there are 5), Theo dismantles these claims with clarity, lived experience, and a deep understanding of the Church’s own teachings.
Check out their podcast (only on Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/show/5KGCDh8YLjn7J8Ur11iaWp
Together, we talk about the joy and solidarity that comes from sharing space with other queer Catholics, and the power of speaking truthfully about what we’ve survived. We reflect on how familiar rhetoric from figures like Jason Evert and Fr. Mike Schmitz shaped our understandings of ourselves—and how Theo’s work helps expose the holes in those narratives. If you’ve ever been told that queerness is a wound to be healed, this conversation is for you. And after listening, we highly encourage you to check out Theo’s podcast, Disordered, available now on Spotify.
Content warning: This episode includes discussions of transphobia, conversion therapy, religious trauma, and Side B theology.
Raised in the Lamb of God Covenant Community, Audrey Clare Farley grew up in a tightly controlled environment shaped by charismatic Catholicism, rigid gender roles, and a theology that demanded obedience at all costs. Now a historian and author, Audrey reflects on how that formative experience shaped her work on eugenics, religious fundamentalism, and the ways society constructs categories like “madness” and “monstrosity” to justify violence.
In this conversation, Audrey joins Max and Emma to discuss the quiet violence of spiritual abuse, how high-control religious spaces blur the lines between holiness and harm, and why storytelling is vital for recovery and resistance. Together, we explore what happens when faith communities become more invested in control than care—and how reclaiming your voice can be an act of liberation. Look out for the recap essay on our Substack, which functions as long-form show notes and will include relevant links to Audrey’s work and more.
Content statement: Before you listen to this episode, take a beat. Today's episode features discussions of clergy sex abuse, sexual assault, purity culture, grief and loss. As someone who lived through purity culture, Emma knows that discussions of virginity can be especially triggering to many of us, so before diving in, take a breath and assess where you are. If you're not in a good spot right now, feel free to come back later. We really appreciate you holding space with us and taking care of yourselves. The conversations we have are difficult but important, but to create change, we need to respect and maintain our boundaries and prioritize our well being.
What does it mean to investigate the Church you still call home? And what happens when Catholic media itself becomes a tool of control?
This week on Whiplash, we continue our High-Control Catholicism series with a powerful conversation with journalist, editor, and teacher Heidi Schlumpf. Heidi reflects on her career investigating the Catholic Church from within, and what it means to report on far-right Catholic media empires as a person of faith. Together we explore the tensions of holding institutions accountable while still being rooted in the tradition — from covering figures like Matthew Kelly to chronicling the rise of conservative movements in Catholic media and politics.
We also talk about the challenge of teaching Catholic Social Teaching to a new generation, and the bridge liberal Catholics have built between the past and the present. This is a conversation about faith, power, resilience, and what it means to speak the truth even in high-control spaces.
Full show notes and a deeper written recap of this episode are available in our Substack essay, published two days after the show airs. https://maxwellkuzma.substack.com/podcast
What happens when faith becomes more about control than love? In this episode, we kick off our High Control Catholicism series by unpacking the patterns of authoritarianism, rigidity, and fear that show up in certain corners of the Catholic Church—from the windswept plains of St. Marys, Kansas to the halls of Opus Dei and Franciscan University. We share stories from our readers, reflect on our own encounters with high-control dynamics, and explore how seemingly small practices, like the Marian consecration chain bracelet, reinforce a culture of conformity.This series isn’t about condemnation—it’s about naming what so many of us have experienced but didn’t always have language for. Whether you grew up in a traditionalist parish, encountered Catholic fundamentalism in college, or just want to understand how these patterns emerge, this conversation offers tools to help you see and speak about them. Share your own story in the comments—we’d love to hear from you. And don’t forget to subscribe for more deep dives on faith, power, and healing.Check out our longform written essay on St. Marys here: https://maxwellkuzma.substack.com/p/out-of-time-catholic-separatism-in
Kaya Oakes is a Catholic writer, feminist, teacher, and author of Radical Reinvention, The Defiant Middle, and most recently, Not So Sorry. Kaya’s work wrestles with some of the deepest tensions in faith: grief and joy, resistance and belonging, accountability and forgiveness. In this conversation, we explore her journey from Catholic schoolgirl to Bay Area punk activist and back to church on her own terms, her critique of how institutions weaponize forgiveness against survivors, and her vision for a more honest, embodied, and inclusive Catholicism.
We also discuss the impact of purity culture, queer joy, respectability politics in church spaces, and why she calls herself an “accomplice” to the queer community. Kaya challenges both secular and religious narratives that demand reconciliation without accountability — and reminds us that Catholicism can and must evolve.
Content note: This episode includes discussion of sexual abuse, conversion therapy, purity culture, family estrangement, cancer, and loss. Please take care while listening.
In this special Pride Month episode of Whiplash, Max and Emma sit down with Evelyn Lundy, cohost of the podcast Leave, Laugh, Love, to talk about queer awakening, Catholic deconstruction, and what happens when faith communities can’t hold the fullness of who we are. Evelyn shares her journey from youth group devotion to Franciscan University, where a mix of theology classes, queer Catholic classmates, and a whole lot of fundamentalism led her to start questioning everything. It's a conversation filled with honesty, laughter, and a few eyebrow-raising stories—yes, including Catholic monarchists.But this episode is also about reclaiming what was left out. Emma puts on her “history hat” to lead a deep dive into the roots of Pride Month, tracing the stories, resistance, and erasure that shaped our understanding of queerness and liberation. Together, we reflect on what it means to unlearn harmful theology, remember queer history, and take pride in becoming who we are. Whether you're in the church, out of it, or still sorting things out—this one’s for you.