By Tracey Primrose
In the Catholic Church, “Ordinary Time” refers to the weeks of the liturgical year that are not part of the major seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent or Easter. In naming his new podcast, “Catholics in Ordinary Time,” Fr. Jack Bentz, SJ, a member of the Jesuits West Province, gives a nod to the everyday in a series of conversations with “regular Catholics, who come in all shapes and sizes, with unique histories that defy neat categories.”
Fr. Bentz’s desire to reflect a diversity of perspectives is not surprising for someone who grew up on a cattle ranch in eastern Oregon and spent the better part of a decade working as an actor in New York and Seattle, “where I did a lot of plays you never heard of.” To pay the bills, he waited tables and worked as a gardener and landscape designer until a call from Christ could be ignored no longer. He became a Jesuit in 1995.
His ministerial life has been as wide-ranging as his early years. Among other roles, he worked in governance and as a vocation director for the Jesuits; served as the campus minister for the Catholic Student Center at Boise State University; and was the pastor of a diverse parish in Hollywood, California. Now, missioned to work in university ministry at his alma mater, Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington, and as a young adult minister at St. Aloysius Parish adjacent to campus, Fr. Bentz was anxious to venture into the digital Catholic world. He said, “I felt that the conservative Catholic world was well represented, but there were fewer opportunities for other voices.”
The first season of his podcast focused on young adults, and each episode featured a different story—from parents raising children in the Church to someone who was raised Catholic but found a spiritual home in a non-denominational church. The conversations, Fr. Bentz says, are about “tradition and transformation.”
His second season focuses on “queer Catholic women who have decided to stay in the Church. These are stories of women finding faith communities that value them as they are and as they could become in Christ. I had a wide range of women—from late 20s to early 70s—that I had the privilege to talk with.” His third season on converts to the faith is being developed with plans for a fourth season on young families and the Latin Mass.
While Fr. Bentz hopes to grow his podcast and Substack blog by adding more ordinary followers, he is quick to admit that Church leadership is one of his most important target audiences. “The Church right now is going through a period of synodality. It’s important for people who are wearing collars to listen to people who are not wearing collars, those people we hope to serve. We often struggle to find those spaces to listen to what the Holy Spirit is telling us now and where the Spirit wants us to go next.”
