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I was driving the carpool when I learned that Charlie Kirk had been murdered.
I had to pull over. And I wept as a carful of boys sat in stunned silence.
It’s been a tumultuous few weeks for American Catholics.
Kirk was a committed man of Christ whose witness was unrivaled among America’s youth.
He wasn’t Catholic, but he spoke of Mary as the “the solution to toxic feminism” and has been photographed attending Mass with his wife Erika.
His death came just days after Pope Leo canonized two young men who were also tremendous public witnesses for Christ, Saints Pier Giorgio Frassati and Carlo Acutis, the first saint of the Millennial generation.
Tens of thousands of young people joyfully witnessed the event in St. Peter’s Square.
And that came just 10 days after two Catholic schoolchildren were shot and killed during their back-to-school Mass in Minneapolis.
It’s the agony and the ecstasy.
The school shooter was mentally deranged, and Kirk’s killer may turn out to be too.
But that doesn’t change the reality that Catholics and Christians more broadly feel under siege.
The Family Research Council has recorded more than 500 attacks on Catholic parishes since 2020, and more than 400 on Christian houses of worship last year alone. (Jewish organizations in the US must spend a staggering $765 million a year on security.)
My children’s Catholic school now has constant police presence, and a police officer stands watch outside our Sunday Mass. This is our new reality.
So Kirk’s death feels personal. Who will ever forget the image of Erika Kirk being driven to meet his casket, crying as she displayed his cross necklace and the religious medal he wore when he was murdered in cold blood.
She didn’t need words. We know what she meant: “This is who Charlie Kirk was. Remember him this way.”
But he already told us that himself. As a man of the social media era, almost everything he ever said can be pulled up with a click.
A podcaster once asked Kirk how he would want to be remembered.
“If I die?” he responded, surprised.
Then, unflinchingly: “I want to be remembered for courage for my faith. That would be the most important thing.”
Nothing more. No virtue signaling. Just courage in faith.
“I am nothing without Jesus,” Kirk told Russell Brand on his show.
Days before his murder he tweeted, “Jesus defeated death so that you may live.”
He quoted Corinthians minutes before he was shot.
Kirk amassed a massive following in large part because of his ability to spar on college campuses and debate with civil but devastating skill.
But he built that following on the foundation of his message about the importance of faith and family.
That message grew louder and louder over the years and became his dominant theme toward the end of his short life.
A few months ago, Laura Ingraham asked him about success as a speaker and political influencer,
“Having children is more important than having a great career,” he replied.
“I have an amazingly blessed career. Our podcast is doing great. But . . . my kids matter way more than how many social media followers I have.”
Those are Christian values, not the values of today’s society.
Maybe that’s starting to change: A recent poll of Gen Z Americans found that young male Trump voters ranked marriage, children and “being spiritually grounded” high on their lists of life goals — while others put those priorities at the bottom.
Kirk went into the academy, the modern-day lion’s den, and engaged with those people, touching their souls and perhaps changing their minds.
He boldly spoke the truth about the dignity of the human person, especially the unborn, about marriage, about gender.
And it cost him his life.
To Christians, his loss registers as a personal attack on one of our own who died defending what we believe.
The setting of his death conjured Nero’s Rome. Encircled in the arena, speaking with Christian civility until his very last breath.
The brutal execution. And then the heartless and outright cruel response from so many.
It’s all too familiar for Christians — and there is simply no doubt it will be the inspiration for countless young men and women to live their faith boldly.
In 2013, Kirk tweeted: “Good men must die. But death can’t kill their names.”
The Christian’s only consolation in moments such as these is that while this world will fade away, the soul does not.
May the Lord receive Charlie Kirk’s. His name, and his witness, lives with us.
Ashley McGuire is a senior fellow with The Catholic Association and co-host of the nationally syndicated radio show “Conversations with Consequences.”