Unlike most Catholic priests, Fr. Joshua is married with children. He and his wife Alli live in North Dallas with their four children: Maggie, Peter, Zoe-Catherine, and Bernadette. He’s currently serving as Pastoral Administrator of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas.
A former Episcopal priest, Fr. Joshua trained for ministry in England at the College of the Resurrection in Mirfield, England. After serving in the Episcopal Church for several years, he and Alli converted to Catholicism in 2009. He served St. Rita Catholic Community as it’s director of faith formation until he was ordained a Catholic priest through the Pastoral Provision of Pope Saint John Paul II in 2012. Since then he has served at St. Rita as parochial vicar and now pastor.
Originally from Glen Rose, Texas—the son of a football coach—he’s an alum of Texas Tech, the University of Leeds, and Duke University. He is the author of Pilgrim Holiness: Martyrdom as Descriptive Witness (Cascade, 2009), The Crisis of Bad Preaching: Redeeming the Heart and Way of the Catholic Preacher (Ave Maria Press, 2019) and Eucharist, Bread of Life (Liturgical Press, 2020). Fr. Joshua also writes regularly for Our Sunday Visitor, America Magazine, and Church Life Journal of Notre Dame. He is also a regular contributor to the Dallas Morning News, his columns appearing in newspapers all over the world.
Recent Publications
Church Life Journal
“Medjugorje and the Desire for a Wilder Catholicism” (2024)
“Wes Anderson’s Chafings Against the Immanent Frame: An Addendum” (2023)
“The Spiritual Place and Moment of Listening” (2023)
“What should the Eucharistic Revival look like?” (2023)
“Shedding tears for Royal Tenenbaum: a liturgical approach” (2021)
“Longfellow’s Christmas Bells and a better America” (2020)
“A priest for James Carroll” (2019)
“The spiritual desert isn’t optional” (2019)
Plough Quarterly
“Jacques Ellul, Prophet of the Tech Age” (2024)
Our Sunday Visitor
“Episcopal infighting is nothing new, but danger lurks” (2023)
“To come to God, one must first listen to him” (2022)
“Can denying Communion be an act of charity? Absolutely” (2022)
“Will Smith, Chris Rock and a Lenten lesson” (2022)
“Abortion is war; are we fighting it well?” (2021)
For even more, visit Our Sunday Visitor
America Magazine
“What the Eucharistic revival means to me as a Catholic convert” (2022)
“A married Catholic priest’s lessons from two kinds of fatherhood” (2022)
“Not many Catholics care about the Synod. But I’m not ready to give up on it yet” (2022)
“What can Catholic preachers learn from Bishop Michael Curry’s royal wedding sermon?” (2018)
The Dallas Morning News
“Voting isn’t sacred but it’s essential” (2024)
“I’m battling civic depression” (2024)
“Ten Commandments don’t belong in Texas classrooms” (2024)
“Celibacy is cool now” (2024)
“A bad gamble for Texas” (2024)
“Why are Americans so lonely, and what can we do about it?” (2024)
“Dallas lost a great journalist, a rememberer” (2024)
“A new age of holy war?” (2023)
“That Texas Rangers feeling” (2023)
“Let’s give to the homeless responsibly, and irresponsibly too” (2023)
“The boy and the monastery” (2023)
“I’m already tired of this election cycle” (2023)
“Our world has gotten too noisy” (2023)
“Is this the end of America? If so, it’s a pathetic end” (2023)
“Benedict’s legacy is complicated” (2023)
“The creative hospitality of post-COVID churches” (2022)
“America, we are just as incoherent and petty as Will Smith” (2022)
“Antisemitism is a special kind of violence, but that’s hard for Americans to grasp” (2022)
“Do vaccine mandates violate or support our freedom? Avoid anyone who thinks this question is easy” (2021)
“By showing his scars, Jesus spread peace” (2021)
“In a country losing its democracy, a Myanmar nun shows us what freedom really looks like” (2021)
“Not just Lent. For an entire year we’ve been contemplating our mortality” (2021)
“Listening to the blues is to tempt changing the mind about race” (2021)
“As COVID-19 bears down, we are practicing our true religion of buying things to feel better” (2020)
“Why bad Catholics can make good presidents” (2020)
“Thank You, Jerry Jeff, for making us feel good in that Texan sort of way” (2020)
“What does arming ourselves in our houses of worship do to our souls?” (2020)
“Hope is the inverse of cancel culture” (2019)
“Our phones have become the serpent in our Garden of Eden and ancient wisdom can help” (2018)
“Constant shocking news has left us speechless, but we cannot retreat from each other” (2018)
“The church can no longer ignore the chasm between Catholicism and Catholics” (2018)
“The morality of Starbucks isn’t moral enough” (2018)
“Why Martin Luther King’s murder isn’t yet history” (2018)
“Twitter has left Catholics deeply divided under a celebrity pope” (2018)
“Hell is tedious, maddening repetition, and we’re living it with gun violence” (2018)
“Where are the public religious voices that can save the soul of our country?” (2018)
“Read good books and save yourself from the Twitter age” (2018)
“We choose not to see the freaks among us, and we are surprised when they kill” (2018)
“In the age of Trump, silence is the worst thing and love is the hardest” (2017)
“How can kids weather the folly of youth in an age of digital permanent records?” (2017)
“When does our moral outrage about racism finally lead to change?” (2017)
“No, God did not anoint Trump to nuke North Korea” (2017)
“What will you do on Memorial Day, or what will the day do to you?” (2017)
“In a world of screen images, words can keep us human” (2017)
“The history of baseball in Texas tells the story of us” (2017)
“America still needs Christians” (2017)
“Dying Syrian children prompt our purifying worship of war” (2017)
“I’m a married Catholic priest who thinks priests shouldn’t get married” (2017)
“What will be the decisive event that ushers in the 21st century?” (2017)
“We are slaves to our shiny screens” (2016)
“This election calls for the wisdom of Winnie-the-Pooh” (2016)
“How to remain faithful amid an election that distorts religion” (2016)
For even more, visit The Dallas Morning News