It’s the end of an era: after many faithful years at Catholic Answers, Tim Staples is retiring.
From his own conversion to the Catholic Faith to his decades of apologetics and evangelization, Tim has helped countless people better understand, defend, and love the Church. His books, talks, radio answers, charity, and unmistakable joy have left a lasting mark on so many souls.
One way to show Tim’s impact is by the testimonies of those who have worked closely with him. Several of these follow, with a bright through-line spotlighting the many goods Tim has brought to the world of apologetics and to countless individuals.
To be honest, we don’t expect Tim ever to stop “working,” if he can even use that word for the evangelizing, explaining, and defending that come so naturally to him. Godspeed, Tim, and thank you.
Christopher Check
Bart Starr, Hank Aaron, Tim Staples—three names that can be said in one breath. There are more recent celebrity athletes with more sparkly stats, perhaps, but I put Tim in this company not only for Tim’s greatness in his field—Tim is the OG apologetics GOAT—but also because, like Starr and Aaron, Tim has always been first about his team and the game. And the game Tim plays every day, and is an undisputed champion of, is the only one that matters: eternity.
Sorrow and joy are so often bound up on this side of the veil. It has been a sorrow to witness the challenges heaped upon this man, whom, for his innate and indefatigable willingness, I like to call the Labrador Retriever of Catholic Answers. Tim’s lost nothing of his staggering and ready command of Scripture, St. Thomas, and Church documents, but certain blows in this valley of tears have taken their toll on his sowing and harvesting in the vineyard. And yet—seat him behind a microphone in the Catholic Answers studio or stick one in his hand behind any podium (not that he will stay behind the podium!), and the unmitigated energy and joy of his earliest apologetics days returns. Can I get an Amen?
I have marveled since before we worked together at Tim’s depth and breadth of knowledge and at his capacity to render an involved theological or doctrinal question with extraordinary lucidity and accessibility. The thing I most admire about the man, however, and—of all the things he has taught me—the thing I treasure most, is his certain conviction that every single soul is worthy of his time.
For Tim, apologetics and evangelization have never been about the metrics or the numbers. They are about the individual human person with whom he is talking, who at that moment might as well be the only other person on earth. You hear this care in his habitual repetition of a caller’s or audience member’s first name over the course of his answer. It’s not a mere rhetorical device—it’s love. And where it most manifests is in those many, many occasions when Tim, long after a talk is over, the lights in the church all are turned off, and all the folks have gone home, has stayed up till two or three in the morning in the parking lot with that one young man still struggling with a Church teaching.
In this way, he very much reflects the Good Shepherd leaving the ninety-nine behind to bring back the stray. From where does this love come? From his own palpable love of Jesus Christ and the Church he founded.
Godspeed, Tim, and Semper Fidelis. Working alongside you has been an honor, and inspiration, and a joy.
Karlo Broussard
I first encountered Tim Staples’s work when I was about seventeen years old. I listened to his cassette tape—yes, a tape, not even a CD—called “The Bible Made Me Catholic.” Although it wasn’t my first exposure to apologetics (I’d already begun studying it during my junior and senior years of high school), Tim’s presentation was unlike anything I had heard before. His Pentecostal zeal and passion captivated my mind and my heart. I was exhilarated. From that moment on, I sensed God calling me to become an apologist. I wanted to do what Tim Staples did.
After I met Tim several times at events in southern Louisiana, he befriended me and eventually took me under his wing. For the next fifteen years, he mentored me from a distance, guiding my apologetics studies and repeatedly telling me that one day, we’d work together. Then, in 2015, that promise became a reality when Tim hired me as a full-time staff apologist at Catholic Answers. The dream had come true: I was now serving alongside the man who had inspired my vocation.
I truly don’t think the landscape of Catholic apologetics in America would be what it is today without Tim Staples. Only on the other side of eternity will we know how many souls the Lord reached through his ministry. I know one thing for certain: I am one of them.
Thank you, Tim. I owe my career to you.
Trent Horn
Tim Staples is one of the most influential Catholic apologists in the English-speaking world and has played a significant role in the growth of Catholic apologetics since the late twentieth century. Tim has reached millions of people through his radio programs, debates, conferences, and articles. Tim has been able to do this without succumbing to the “clickbait”- or drama-driven rhetoric of other Catholic speakers and influencers. His book defending the Marian dogmas is also a classic I often recommend to people who struggle with understanding those doctrines.
As a public speaker, Tim brings the energy of a Southern preacher with the intellectual wherewithal of a seasoned Catholic apologist. He has also been an excellent role model in showing how a Catholic apologist should have an intimate knowledge of the scriptures, theology, and Church history. Finally, his work has helped shape modern Catholic apologetics by demonstrating that Catholic doctrine can be defended through rigorous engagement with Scripture, reason, and the historical witness of Christianity.
Peggy Frye
Tim Staples has made a lasting impact on Catholic apologetics by explaining and defending the Church’s teachings with clarity, faith, and conviction. Over his many years with Catholic Answers, he has helped countless people understand the Faith more deeply by answering difficult questions about doctrine, Scripture, Tradition, Marian theology, the sacraments, common Protestant objections, and more.
Tim has always emphasized the importance of every Catholic knowing the Faith, living it, and being ready to share it with charity and confidence. He has carried out this mission through his books, articles, conference talks, parish missions, appearances on Catholic Answers Live, and online work. He has a remarkable gift for making Catholic teaching accessible to converts, non-Catholics, those returning to the Church, and anyone sincerely searching for the truth.
His work has strengthened practicing Catholics and helped many others find their way into the Church—or return home to the Catholic faith. What makes Tim so effective is not only what he knows, but the way he communicates Catholic truth—with reason, conviction, joy, and a deep love for the people he serves.
Having worked with Tim for many years, I had the privilege of seeing his gifts up close. Tim loves to teach, and his door was always open to me and my colleagues. Whether we had questions of our own or needed help responding to someone else’s, he always made time. He has an incredible knowledge of Church teaching and a rare ability to make complex theological truths easy to understand. His memory is extraordinary—he knows Scripture, the Church Fathers, and Church documents inside and out.
I learned so much from him over the years, and I’ll always be grateful for his generosity, his faithfulness, his service to the Church, and his friendship.
Jimmy Akin
I’ve known the work of Tim Staples for literally decades. I knew it before he joined the staff of Catholic Answers, and it was when I was our director of apologetics that he came on board.
Tim has always had a passion for apologetic work, and that passion shows. In particular, he has shown extraordinary talent for Bible memorization. All one has to do is raise a topic, and Tim will be able to cite chapter and verse and quote multiple passages that deal with it.
In doing this, Tim’s approach differs from my own. I tend to focus not as much on Bible memorization as breadth of Bible reading, so I appeal to biblical themes and passages without citing exact chapter and verse and without giving exact quotations. Both approaches—wide Bible reading and the memorization of specific passages—have benefits, and they serve different groups.
The same thing is true of the way we deliver apologetics material. Tim has an intense, passionate, emotional delivery, whereas I have a more calm, laid-back approach. Again, both have benefits, and they serve different audiences.
It is precisely the differences between Tim’s approach and my own that I find valuable. Apologists are not meant to be cookie-cutter images of each other. By God’s design, they are meant to have differences that appeal to different groups and allow them to reach those groups with the truth of the Faith. Just as Peter and Paul had different approaches, unity in faith but diversity in style is what advances the gospel.
It is my honor to have worked with Tim for all these years, each of us striving in his own, inimitable way to bring the truth to people, as we’ve labored side by side in God’s vineyard.
Tom Nash
When I think of Tim Staples’s long and distinguished tenure at Catholic Answers, I immediately think of how Tim explains and defends the Faith with great conviction and joy. Combined with his remarkable ability to recall and cite verbatim many passages from the New Testament, Tim has won over friend and foe alike for more than twenty years on Catholic Answers Live.
In the process, Tim has also distinguished himself as a merciful ambassador of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18-20), attentively listening to—and encouraging—those who are suffering, including some who’ve been harmed by Catholic representatives who gravely betrayed the Church’s God-given mission (see Matt. 28:18-20). Tim thus reminds one and all that we are and remain Catholic because our Lord Jesus Christ founded—and continues to sustain—his one Catholic Church, just as he promised he would (Matt. 16:18-19; see Luke 22:31-32).
Tim has edified audiences in person throughout the country—and across the world—on behalf of Catholic Answers. Tim’s many apologetics articles and CD and DVD sets have also borne great fruit, not to mention his Marian magnum opus on his most beloved saint: Behold Your Mother.
In my own Q&A work as a Catholic Answers apologist, I have often cited and linked to Tim’s excellent explanations and defenses, especially his biblical counterpoints that show how Catholic teachings are faithfully rooted in Sacred Scripture and testified to otherwise by the early Church.
I’ve also long admired Tim as a faithful spouse to his beloved Valerie, whom he providentially met in eucharistic adoration and knew, at first sight, that she was the one, and how he and Val have lovingly raised a big Catholic family together. In turn, Valerie and the kids have given an endearing witness in loving Tim back to health following a serious episode in 2021.
I also have appreciated Tim’s friendship and his support of me as a fellow apologist, and I look forward to continuing our friendship. I will miss our regular and lively conversations on the Faith, sports, and culture, including who would win a fight between Muhammad Ali and Bruce Lee, and my good-naturedly making the case that Pope Francis would’ve benefited from Tim as a close consultant versus some others the late pontiff relied upon.
Finally, a shoutout to Matt Dula, Tim’s former Marine buddy who, with the Good Lord’s help, demonstrated to Tim how Jesus Christ did, in fact, establish the Catholic Church as the New Covenant Israel. Tim has been gratefully—and zealously—“paying it forward” ever since, and there are countless Catholics—and I daresay others on the road to Rome—who are, and will be, forever grateful.
Jen Phelps
Tim Staples has been a teacher, writer, a voice on the radio far longer than his twenty-one years at Catholic Answers. As one of the first and foremost apologists for the Faith, he has shared with the world the beauty of Catholicism with reasonableness and truth. He has shown countless people what the Church teaches and how it can be lived with charity and courage and conviction.
Having worked with Tim for all these years, I know that his contributions are not limited to the vast number of questions he has answered through print and radio and courses and talks. He will also take the time needed to help someone who is struggling, listening with patience and offering compassionate help—well into the night if necessary. As he credits Matt Dula with his conversion, there are countless who can credit Tim with theirs. The far-reaching effects of Tim Staples will not be known to us in this lifetime.
As Tim completes this God-blessed portion of his apologies journey, there are may more seeds to plant for the future of our faith. He is by no means complete with his earthly task.
As for me . . .
. . . the compiler of this well-deserved tribute, “last of all, as to one untimely born,” Tim “appeared also to me.”
My family had come across the country to San Diego to visit the home base, and Tim was doing Catholic Answers Live that day. The radio team invited my six-year-old son to stand across from Tim and ask a question.
I prepared to submit my resignation letter, because a parent never knows what will come out of his kid’s mouth when the pressure is on. But Tim was the perfect guide (01:34:00). He patiently listened, took a child’s question, and expanded it into an answer that not only educated my boy, but also offered worthy insights to everyone listening, in every age group.
Tim’s knowledge is indisputable and well attested to. But what struck me that day was the impression he made on a child he’d never met: You’re important to me. You deserve my time and consideration. If the outside world might grudgingly spare you one minute, I’ll happily give you fifteen. My son still smiles at the memory; I suspect he’ll never forget it.
I write anonymously on purpose because there are thousands, probably tens of thousands, of testimonies like this that deserve a representative. However insignificant a random guy is on the world stage, in the moment God puts him and Tim Staples together, he finds that he couldn’t be more important. This is how enthusiastic new apologists—and perhaps more importantly, joyful new Catholics—are made.
So God bless you, Tim, especially for your smallest kindnesses.