We woke up last Thursday in a different country from the one we knew the morning before. A line had been crossed, one that we hardly realized was there. And if we did, we tried not to see it. Now there is no looking away. Charlie Kirk’s murder is, indeed, a turning point. But toward what does it point?
Gunned down on the threshold of the twenty fourth anniversary of 9/11, Charlie Kirk died because he addressed the Left as if they could hear and be reasoned with. As if they would listen. As if reason could counter the mass credulity and self-righteousness of the reigning intellectual climate—a malignity entrenched in academia, broadcast by media, and prettified in popular culture.
Perhaps reason can prevail someday. But that day is not yet here. The abyss still beckons. It is too soon to know whether Charlie Kirk’s murder will prove a turning point away from the looming edge or propel us over it to terminal collapse.
Utah’s Governor Cox called this killing by its right name: “political assassination.” It was equally an act of terrorism. It brought to mind Donald Trump’s comment in June, 2023. After Jack Smith unsealed a 37-count federal indictment against him, then-candidate Trump stated: “They’re not after me; they’re after you. And I’m just standing in their way.”
Now we see what he meant. Charlie Kirk was not a politician. Neither a legislator nor a public servant. He held no office, had no power beyond his own words. Uniquely gifted as he was, he was still one of us.
The celebratory, even giddy, response to the news of his death was macabre testimony to the frailty of civilization and the instability of our cultural bonds. That single resolute rifle shot clarified the inadequacy of trust in the persuasive power of conversation vis-à-vis the lethal impulses of leftist ideology—particularly the aggressive drive of transgender cultists and Antifa goons. Now we know: Any effective voice against totalitarian logic [“Speech is violence”] is fair game.
God help us.
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The USCCB acknowledged Kirk’s murder. But only in generic—even grudging—terms. The organization offered prayers “for all recent victims of violence.” To the bishops speaking in concert, a targeted political killing carried no broader significance than the stabbing of an innocent Ukrainian refugee on a Charlotte train. As if a planned assassination occupied the same moral plane as random street violence. It was all part of “a perilous moment” from which our shepherds hid behind pious-sounding boilerplate:
In the wake of the tragedy, bishops and Catholic officials across the U.S. are calling for prayer for Kirk’s family, for all the recent victims of violence, and for a renewed spirit of reconciliation in American society.
“The assassination is a tragedy for our country and for humanity,” Bishop Oscar A. Solis of Salt Lake City said, urging the faithful to pray for peace and for a national reckoning that will “rid us of senseless violence once and for all.”
The anodyne statement withheld any mention of Kirk’s godliness, his decency, his achievement, or the nature of the forces against him. Timid and platitudinous, it refused to name the enemy—the lethal radical leftism that demonizes civil debate as hate speech to be silenced by any means necessary. To its shame, the USCCB ignored the transgender component common to Kirk’s murder and the Minneapolis shooting.
Bemoaning “senseless violence” avoids the reality that evil is purposeful. There was purpose—however skewed—to all three bloody acts referenced by the USCCB. (The killer of Iryna Zarutska boasted “I got that white woman!” The sound of intent rings loud. The Minneapolis shooter, like the Utah killer, was familiar with nihilistic online networks that exalt violence for its own sake. )
Murder runs deep. And murder will out.
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There is an element of parody to the USCCB call for “a renewed spirit of reconciliation.” The comment is delusional, a gesture of appeasement. Conciliatory toward what, precisely? Reconciliation with evil is inconceivable, unattainable. There is no such thing as détante between good and evil.
Why are these men not angry? Where are their assertions of enmity toward the cancerous ideas that Kirk himself named “assassination culture” not long ago? Gone missing is any stated rejection of the corruption of reality in reckless name-calling (fascist! Hitler!) Without anger, there is no depth to the response of these fainthearts. Not one of them risks remembering the words of St. Thomas Aquinas:
He who is not angry when there is just cause for anger is immoral. Why? Because anger looks to the good of justice. And if you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.
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Our bishops appear to have forgotten also the words to Pope Leo XIII’s prayer for victory in spiritual warfare: “Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.” From 1886 to 1964, Catholics recited that prayer in its entirety after every Low Mass. It was Rome’s parallel to “Onward, Christian Soldiers, marching as to war. . . .”
Penned by an Anglican priest in 1885, “Onward” was meant to be sung by children in a Pentecost procession. In the 1980’s, attempts were made to remove it from the United Methodist Hymnal and the Episcopal Hymnal. Deemed militaristic, it fell into disuse. The prayer to St. Michael occasioned similar decline. Public discourse is detached from any thought of “the ruin of souls.” Nice people do not pray to “cast into hell”even the authors of cultural scripts that corrupt or disfigure our children.
• • • • •
Charlie Kirk was the consummate Christian soldier. He created a movement to set young people—children of today’s decaying culture—on procession toward truth and transcendent purpose.
The fourth stanza of the old Anglican hymn evokes the spirit Kirk brought to his mission:
Onward, then, ye people,
join our happy throng,
Blend with ours your voices
in the triumph song;
Glory, laud, and honor,
unto Christ the King;
This thro’ countless ages
men and angels sing.
May the eternal Father hold Charlie Kirk in memory forever.
