Whiplash with Maxwell Kuzma

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/

In this episode, we take a historical and theological dive into the idea of Christian persecution—where it comes from, how it was formed, and why it still holds so much emotional power today. Drawing from early Christian martyrdom, the development of moral frameworks around suffering and faithfulness, and the long arc of Christianity’s relationship to power, we explore how a story meant to sustain people under real violence became something very different once Christianity moved to the center of cultural and political life. When a faith that once survived on the margins becomes dominant, the meaning of opposition changes—and not always in ways we’re prepared to recognize.From there, we look at how this inherited story plays out in contemporary American Christianity, especially when long-standing cultural authority begins to weaken. We talk about how claims of persecution often emerge not from oppression, but from the loss of being unquestioned; how accusation can function as a kind of confession, revealing what people fear losing; and how everyday moments—classrooms, institutions, public disagreement—get transformed into moral crises. Speaking as two people who grew up in high-control Catholic spaces, we approach this conversation with honesty, care, and clarity, not to attack belief, but to ask what kind of faith becomes possible when we stop mistaking the end of dominance for the beginning of suffering.For more of our work, check out Max’s substack: https://maxwellkuzma.substack.com/

In a moment shaped by state violence, fear-based politics, and the misuse of religious language, this conversation turns toward a different Christian tradition—one rooted in solidarity rather than hierarchy. We explore the history of liberation theology, how queer liberation theology flows from it, and why Catholic social teaching’s preferential option for the poor matters right now. From the killing of Renée Nicole Macklin Good in Minneapolis to recent U.S. intervention in Venezuela, we talk through how state violence is justified, how nationalism reshapes Christianity, and why queer lives are so often treated as expendable. We also trace how liberation theology emerged in response to empire and why queer liberation theology belongs fully within that tradition—not as an add-on, but as a continuation. If you want to keep digging into these themes, you can find more writing and podcast work on high-control Catholicism, Christian and Catholic nationalism, fighting fascism, and online radicalization on the Maxwell Kuzma substack: https://maxwellkuzma.substack.com/

The fight for LGBTQ dignity in the Catholic Church didn’t begin in our lifetime—and this episode traces one priest who proved that publicly and without apology. Fr. Tom Oddo was a Catholic priest living in 1944-1989 who openly advocated for gay rights while also defending a rigorous, human vision of Catholic education, reminding us that courage and reform have always existed within the Church.On Whiplash, Max Kuzma is joined by author Tyler Bieber, whose new book Against the Current: Father Tom Oddo and the New American Catholic chronicles Fr. Tom’s life and legacy, alongside co-host Madeline Marlett. Together, they reflect on what it means to inherit a tradition of public advocacy—and how remembering our elders can sustain the ongoing work of building a more honest, diverse, and faithful Church.Buy Tyler’s book here: https://unencumberedpress.com/product/against-the-current/

Purity culture is often framed as a story about sex and shame, but it’s also a political system shaping whose bodies are protected, disciplined, or cast as threats. In this episode of Whiplash, Emma talks with Sara Moslener, scholar of American religion, race, and gender, and author of After Purity. Sara helps us see how purity culture is deeply entwined with whiteness, Cold War politics, and American nationalism, showing how fears about “unruly bodies” continue to shape public life—especially for queer and trans people. This episode isn’t easy listening, but it’s clarifying. Sara and Emma explore the long afterlife of purity culture in our bodies and communities, helping name the forces behind innocence myths, racialized vulnerability, and the policing of desire. Sara's book, After Purity, is available now: https://www.beacon.org/After-Purity-P2238.aspx

In this episode of Whiplash, Max is joined by Bill, co-host of the film podcast Morally Offensive, for a deep dive into Wake Up Dead Man. Framed as a gothic murder mystery, the film becomes a lens for examining Catholic power, clerical authority, and the uneasy overlap between faith, control, and grifting. Together, Max and Bill explore how the movie stages competing visions of priesthood, why hero worship remains so seductive, and what gets lost when institutional preservation takes priority over people.Building on Max’s written review of the film, this conversation moves beyond the question of “good” versus “bad” priests to interrogate the systems that elevate some figures while quietly absorbing harm. The episode also unpacks the cost of belonging—especially for queer people and others taught to endure spiritual violence for the sake of staying inside the Cxhurch—and asks what real discernment looks like when faith itself has been shaped by power.Guest Links - Bill is a co-host of Morally Offensive, a weekly film podcast examining movies condemned or deemed “morally offensive” by the Catholic Legion of Decency and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.🎙️ Listen to Morally Offensive: www.morallyoffensive.com📱 Follow on Instagram, TikTok, & Threads

Thomas Aquinas is very popular on the Catholic internet—especially in high-control spaces where his work is treated as the final word on hierarchy, gender, sexuality, and social order. In this episode of Whiplash, we take a deep dive into how Aquinas’s theology was shaped by aristocratic privilege, scholastic gatekeeping, and a rigid hierarchical imagination—and how those same frameworks continue to be weaponized today. We trace the lines from medieval metaphysics to modern theobro culture, from natural law to racial hierarchy, and from “order” to the policing of bodies, desires, and belonging.

Masculinity operates within a complex web of power, fear, and purity culture. In high-control Catholic spaces, rigid ideals of manhood are enforced not just through behavior, but through moral systems that label certain bodies, desires, and identities as “acceptable” or “threatening.” These structures protect themselves by policing men and women alike, privileging conformity while punishing deviation. Fear—of queerness, softness, vulnerability, or loss of control—becomes the mechanism that maintains these hierarchies, leaving many men trapped in brittle, performative identities while simultaneously erasing or marginalizing queer and trans people who do not fit the sanctioned narrative.We also examine the broader consequences of these dynamics, including the ways communities are remembered—or erased—through the lens of power, what Willow Sipling calls the “violence of the archive.” The conversation becomes a call for integrity, curiosity, and imagination: to resist replicating harmful structures, to embrace accountability, and to build communities where belonging, embodiment, and moral life aren’t rationed by fear or hierarchy. This episode explores the human cost of rigid masculinity while pointing toward the possibilities of creating spaces rooted in solidarity, reflection, and care.Learn more about our work on substack: https://maxwellkuzma.substack.com/

In this episode of Whiplash, we sit down with Nancy Sylvester, IHM, whose life spans the reforms of Vatican II, decades of Catholic social justice leadership, and a profound commitment to contemplative practice. Nancy shares how contemplative prayer can ground us amid uncertainty, help us navigate conflict with greater clarity, and sustain the long work of transforming our communities and our world.Drawing from her years in religious life and national leadership, Nancy offers a vision of contemplation as a practical tool for personal and social renewal. To learn more about her work and explore her books, visit www.iccdinstitute.org. Join us as we reflect on how rest, reflection, and action can strengthen your inner life and empower meaningful change.

Queer and trans people are often told that our lives have no place in the Christian past—that we’re modern disruptions, not part of the story. But when you look closely at the Middle Ages, that certainty falls apart. The archive is full of gender-expansive figures, boundary-crossing saints, and stories that refuse the neat binaries people try to impose on them today. The trouble isn’t that queer and trans resonances don’t exist—it’s that for too long, many have been invested in ignoring them.This week’s episode digs into that forgotten richness. Emma talks with scholars Alicia Spencer-Hall and Blake Gutt about how medieval hagiography preserves lives and narratives that complicate every tidy claim about “traditional” gender. Their work doesn’t force modern categories onto medieval subjects; it simply lets these stories be as strange, porous, and imaginative as they always were. The result is a conversation about reclaiming history—not rewriting it, but finally recognizing the echoes of queer and trans experience that have always been there.Find their book here: https://www.routledge.com/Trans-and-Genderqueer-Subjects-in-Medieval-Hagiography/Spencer-Hall-Gutt/p/book/9789048559190

Today we break down why crusader armor, Jerusalem cross tattoos, and medieval edits are suddenly everywhere. Emma and I dig into how this aesthetic blends fantasy, Catholic symbols, and far-right vibes into a hypermasculine myth—and why it’s so appealing to young men right now. For more background and de-radicalization insight, don’t miss our companion essay, “Breaking the Crusader Spell,” here: https://maxwellkuzma.substack.com/p/breaking-the-crusader-spell-catholic

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.