Using YouTube to Answer Teens' Questions

Karen Estep discusses a YouTube segment she started with a priest to help answer high-school students’ questions about the Catholic faith.

When a Girl Comes Home

If a girl comes home to the Catholic Church, she’ll have a lot of questions. When she has a lot of questions, she’ll need someone to help answer those questions. When she looks for someone to help answer those questions, she’ll become friends with a priest. When she becomes friends with a priest, she’ll realize that she cannot be the only person with all of these questions.

When she realizes that the high school students where she is a teacher may have questions, she’ll want to start a YouTube segment. When this idea pops into her head, she’ll go to the broadcasting teacher and ask for some help. And when the broadcasting teacher, the girl, and the priest get together, they create a YouTube segment called “Dear Father (fill in the name of the priest here)."

No, this isn’t some childhood story, this is the story of how I helped create a YouTube segment featuring real questions from high school students that they asked our high school chaplain. Although no muffins or cookies were consumed while filming, we did drink a lot of coffee. So, maybe instead of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, it should be “If you Give a Girl an Idea and a Priest Some Coffee.”

And Then the Questions Came

The idea of “Dear Father ____” came from this thought: Even after four years of being Catholic I still have a lot of questions, and I know I cannot be the only one out there experiencing these thoughts and pop-up questions during Mass. At the Catholic high school where I teach, we are encouraged to incorporate our faith into every aspect of what we teach day in and day out. Sometimes students would ask me Catholic specific questions and I had no answer. So, last summer I came up with this idea of creating a weekly segment during our high school’s broadcast where students could ask anonymous questions to our priest and he would answer them.

When I pitched this idea to the broadcasting teacher, he was all in and ready to go. So, then came asking our priest and to be fair, I was certain he was going to tell me, “No!” But he didn’t, so the next thing we needed was for the students to start asking questions.

For the first couple of episodes we filmed, I came up with the questions. I tried to think of things our non-Catholic students may not necessarily know, such as what Confession is or why we genuflect before we sit in the pew. However, after the first few episodes, the questions steadily came into our box. Some questions were silly, “Dear Father … What is your McDonald’s order?” but a lot of questions were really insightful about our faith, like this one: “Dear Father … Can someone who is not Catholic make it into the Kingdom of Heaven? If the answer is yes, then what is the point of being Catholic?” or “Where is the oddest place you have heard Confession?”

The students quickly bought into this anonymous question box and would not-so-patiently wait for their questions to be answered. I would often get stopped in the hallway and asked when a particular question would air. Eventually even the staff at school would start submitting questions and it was amazing to see everyone getting involved in this little idea I had.

Surviving Mid-Year Changes

The priest at our high school was reassigned mid-year, and one of the first questions I had was whether the school's new priest would embrace the show we had created. By the middle of the year, we had many unanswered questions stored up, and questions kept coming into our box. I was worried but it turns out there was no reason to be and God always has a plan greater than our own. “Dear Father Mark” turned into “Dear Father Horan” and the show went on. It was actually a great way to introduce our new priest to the school as a whole and his first episode was a hit with him answering questions for the student body to get to know him better.

Father Horan has taken on this part of his assignment with enthusiasm, and I think really enjoys getting to answer student and faculty questions. Questions continued to come in, even after our priest changed, and students were still excited to see their question featured on our weekly show.

Success

What started as a little idea and a lot of cups of coffee became successful in our school. We had more than 150 questions submitted by students and staff this year, and we answered 140 of those questions on our segment. I spent some time at the end of the school year reflecting on the show with one of my friends and actually broke down in happy tears. I was so excited that this little idea was having a positive impact on the students. I was so proud of the students for feeling safe enough with us to answer some of their more difficult questions and proud of the broadcasting teacher and both priests for helping this little idea come to fruition.

We still plan on continuing the show next year and you know the drill: If you give a girl a new school year, she just might down some coffee and come up with some new ideas!

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Copyright 2026 Karen Estep
Images: Canva