(LifeSiteNews) — The brutal assassination of Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University shocks the conscience. Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old gunman, radicalized by the toxic brew of progressive ideologies, the harmful ingestion of leftist media and social media sites (Discord, ANTIFA), and the violent online gaming culture (Helldivers 2, Call of Duty), cut down an effective, vibrant voice for truth, Christian principles, free speech and patriotism with a single shot.
The three unfired bullet casings recovered from the rifle used in the shooting contained the elucidating engraved messages, “Hey fascist! Catch!” “Oh bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao” (lyrics from the Italian anti-fascist partisan song “Bella Ciao”), and “If you read this, you are gay LMAO” (a taunting internet meme).
Kirk, the young firebrand who built Turning Point USA into a bulwark against cultural decay, was no stranger to controversy. He spoke boldly against the slaughter of the unborn, the erosion of marriage, transgenderism, and the ideological capture of our institutions. For this, he was hated.
Kirk was hated because he championed Os Guinness’ “Golden Triangle” theory of freedom: freedom requires virtue, and virtue requires faith, and faith requires freedom.
And now, in death, the same voices that demonized him seek to bury his legacy under a pile of moral equivocation.
As Catholics, we mourn not just a political ally but a brother in Christ whose life testified to the Gospel’s unyielding demands. The Catechism reminds us that human life is sacred from conception to natural death (CCC 2258) and murder is an abomination that cries out to heaven (Genesis 4:10). Likewise, the sin of Sodom, condemned in Genesis 19 and reaffirmed in the Church’s moral teaching (CCC 2357), is among those grave offenses that cry to heaven for vengeance, wounding the divine order and imperiling souls.
We pray for Charlie’s eternal rest, for his family’s solace, and for the conversion of his killer. Yet in this moment of grief, a pernicious narrative has emerged from the left: that Kirk’s so-called “hate speech” somehow contributed to his own demise.
MSNBC’s post-assassination commentary typified this grotesque victim-blaming, with senior political analyst Matthew Dowd declaring, “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.” (Dowd was subsequently fired from MSNBC for his remarks.)
From the leftist perspective, Kirk’s unapologetic defense of traditional values was not charity but provocation – a spark that ignited the assassin’s rage.
This is not merely political spin; it is a theological inversion, a rejection of the very essence of Christian charity. True charity, as St. Paul instructs, rejoices in the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6). It is not the saccharine niceness peddled by a secular age, where feelings trump facts and offense is the ultimate sin.
No, authentic charity – rooted in God’s love – demands that we speak truth even when it wounds, for the soul’s salvation hangs in the balance. St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologica, teaches that fraternal correction is an act of mercy, obligatory when a brother’s sin endangers his eternal welfare (II-II, q. 33).
To withhold it out of fear of offense is not kindness; it is complicity in damnation. Consider Our Lord Himself. Jesus did not mince words when He called the Pharisees “whitewashed tombs” (Matthew 23:27) or a “brood of vipers” (Matthew 12:34). His words offended, yes – fatally so, culminating in the Cross. Yet they were the pinnacle of charity, offered in love to rouse hardened hearts from complacency. The prophets before Him fared no better: Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:27), Jeremiah wept over Israel’s idolatry while decrying it as adultery (Jeremiah 3:1-5).
St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church, penned fiery letters to the corrupt pope in Avignon, calling him to repentance with language that scorched the page. “You have prostituted your office,” she wrote, yet her intent was restoration, not destruction.
St. Augustine expressed the idea that true charity (love) can sometimes involve correction that might offend, particularly when the aim is to correct sin or guide someone toward truth. In his Sermons on the New Testament (Sermon 82), Augustine discusses the duty to correct others with charity, referencing Matthew 18:15 on reproving a brother who sins.
He emphasizes that love requires addressing wrongdoing to prevent spiritual harm, even if it risks causing offense: “You must not keep silent when you see your brother doing wrong … Charity compels you to speak.” Similarly, in City of God (Book 1, Chapter 9), Augustine defends the idea that true charity prioritizes eternal truth over temporal comfort, sometimes requiring sharp words to awaken someone from error. He says that failing to correct out of fear of offending can be a form of cowardice, not love.
These holy witnesses teach us: charity offends because sin offends God. To soften the message is to dilute the medicine.
Charlie Kirk was loved because he embodied this prophetic charity. He had heroic virtue and joyfully carried Jesus into the public square. He did not hate; he loved fiercely enough to confront the lies devouring our culture. On abortion, he echoed the Church’s unwavering stance: the preborn are persons, and their extermination is not healthcare but homicide (Evangelium Vitae, 57). When he decried the sin of Sodom and gender ideology’s assault on the imago Dei in every child, he upheld the truth of human nature as God created it – male and female (Genesis 1:27).
Kirk’s critiques of “woke” indoctrination in schools were not bigotry but a cry for innocence preserved, aligning with Pius XI’s condemnation of secular humanism in Divini Illius Magistri.
To the leftist ear, these truths sound like “hate speech” because they dismantle the idols of autonomy and relativism. But as Flannery O’Connor observed, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.” Kirk’s words were odd only to a world unmoored from objective morality. Kirk knew that if you want to dance with the devil, you go with the flow. If you want to imitate Christ, one must pick up his cross, be signum cui contradicetur (a sign of contradiction) (Luke 2:34) and go against the grain.
The left’s rush to blame Kirk’s rhetoric for his death reveals a deeper heresy: the idolatry of tolerance. By equating speech with violence, they invert justice, holding the messenger accountable while excusing the murderer. This is not new; it mirrors the Sanhedrin’s trial of Christ, where His words were twisted into sedition to justify crucifixion.
Data from the Global Terrorism Database shows that in recent years, left-wing extremists have perpetrated acts of violence at rates far exceeding those from the right – yet when a conservative is slain, the narrative flips to “toxic masculinity” or “far-right rhetoric.” Such hypocrisy silences dissent, paving the way for a soft totalitarianism where only approved pieties are permitted. As Catholics, we reject this.
Religious freedom includes the right to profess truth without coercion. To muzzle Kirk posthumously is to mock the martyrs who died proclaiming it.
In the days ahead, as the suspect faces justice and our nation grapples with its fractures, let us reclaim charity’s true face: bold, sometimes offending, but always focused on truth, charity, repentance, the salvation of souls, and eternal life. As Charlie would say, “make heaven crowded.”
Priests and parishes should host forums echoing Kirk’s zeal, catechizing youth on the Church’s social doctrine without apology, including its clear teaching against sins that cry to heaven, like murder and the sin of Sodom.
Bishops, emulate St. John Fisher, who faced Henry VIII’s axe rather than bend.
And all of us – lay and ordained – must resolve to speak as Kirk did: not in malice, but in the love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7).
Charlie Kirk’s blood cries from Utah’s soil, but it also calls us to conversion. May his example embolden us to offend for the sake of souls. Again, we turn to St. Augustine: “The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.” Let truth roar anew.
To truth through humility. To truth through courage.
Charlie Kirk, Requiem En Pace.
Doug Grane is author of Against the Grain: Heroic Catholics Through the Ages (Defiance Press) and Executive Producer of Mass of the Ages (ep. 2 & 3).
