Stop scrolling and clicking and arguing for a few minutes and think about it. If you pray, pray. Really, truly pray.
Charlie Kirk is dead.
I know you know that. But stop scrolling and clicking and arguing for a few minutes and think about it.
If you pray, pray. Really, truly pray.
If you are Catholic, get yourself in front of the Blessed Sacrament. (If you are not Catholic, feel free to, too.) There is no more powerful Presence on this earth. Acknowledge that. Acknowledge Him.
If you don’t pray, just think about the fact Charlie Kirk died because he was speaking.
He went to speak on a campus in Utah.
Lord have mercy on us.
I am so sorry this happened. This shouldn’t have happened.
I am thinking of a woman who lost her husband, to children who have lost their father.
This isn’t about politics.
This is evil.
Over the weekend I encountered a standing-up-to-hate campaign on Sunday. It seemed like we were neutering Sunday. I encountered it while walking into Mass. The prayer of the Mass is more powerful than any human educational campaign. And God is victorious not merely over hate but evil. Good wins. God wins.
We are so confused, we forgot that there is such a thing as good and evil. It is good to debate the best for America. It is evil to shoot someone if you disagree with him about what he thinks is best for America.
I don’t know why Charlie Kirk was murdered today. But in a sense it doesn’t matter why. It happened. And it is evil.
Earlier today, just before Charlie Kirk was shot, I somewhat casually, albeit with anger and dismay, retweeted Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, talking about a poll about violence and speech on campuses.
It was a Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression poll — “The 2026 College Free Speech Rankings.” Over 68,000 students were surveyed. Among other things:
34% of students say using violence to stop someone from speaking on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases.
72% of students say shouting down a speaker on campus is acceptable, at least in rare cases.
When Kristan Hawkins read the poll results, she was on campus at Montana State University where she said: “Food and tour materials were thrown at me, and our whiteboard was vandalized.”
She was on campus — on another one today (or was scheduled to, last I checked). She’s willing to make an unpopular case, knowing it might be a thankless task on a given campus. Knowing it could even get dangerous. That’s not theoretical now. Getting food thrown at you is bad enough. If only that’s what happened to Kirk.
He’s dead.
Do we value life? Do we value free speech? Do we realize what a tremendous gift we have living in the United States, where, with imperfections, we have long considered these things our treasures, gifts from God in many ways, and our offerings to the world? Especially to the poor and persecuted.
God hates when we sin, but made us free to do so — to utterly reject Him. God didn’t have to do that. The least we can do, made in the image and likeness of God as we are, is at least respect the free will of others.
You are free to do something else on campus when Kristan is there. Or to argue with her — she’s not afraid.
But shooting — and killing — someone because you don’t like his politics — or blaming him, MSNBC — is not okay. It is giving cover to evil, at the very least. Charlie Kirk was a man. With a wife and children, and all the rest. A man doesn’t deserve to be shot because you don’t like his politics.
It’s not right that speakers are going to give second thoughts to going on campus. My encounters over the years with opposition pale in comparison to being murdered, but there was a period of time, I confess, when I stopped doing pro-life events in New York “out of an abundance of caution.” The other night, it dawned on me I should let a person or two know where I was going, because I realized it fell under multiple threat levels.
Here is Sr. Miriam James Heidland, shortly after Kirk was shot, before we knew he had been killed:
And here she is on the healing power of mercy, if you’d like to click on that now instead of watching or reading commentary or watching or rewatching a murder.
Pray. Pray for peace. Pray for peace in human hearts. Pray for the impossible — consolation for the Kirk family.
And if you don’t pray, stop. Think about what, if it’s not the Beatitudes or the Commandments, you can do to be a peacemaker in the midst of a battle between good and evil, the battle that is more enduring than any campaign or any political ideology.
Lord have mercy on us.
We need a spiritual revival. That begins in our hearts. That begins doing what the children at Annunciation School in Minnesota were doing at their opening-school Mass: Praying.
It’s the most powerful thing we can do right now. It’s the only effective thing most of us can do, knowing that Charlie Kirk died today. You may want to pass legislation or argue or be angry at MSNBC or many other things. But pray. And commit to something better than hating people you disagree with — and worse.