What We Can Learn from Charlie Kirk

“A cry can be a spiritual gesture.” That’s what Pope Leo XIV said on Wednesday morning in reflecting on the cry of Christ from the cross. We come into the world crying, and “it is also a way of staying alive.” He said:

One cries when one suffers, but also when one loves, one calls, one invokes. To cry out is saying who we are, that we do not want to fade away in silence, that we still have something to offer. . . . A cry is never pointless if it is born of love. And it is never ignored, if it is delivered to God. It is a way to not give in to cynicism, to continue to believe that another world is possible.

Hours later, a well-known commentator and political activist, Charlie Kirk, was fatally shot. He was a husband and father of two young children. A man who did what the best of us do -- invite people to engage on ideas. They often came full of emotion and not always with the respect he gave them. But he was a model of respect and decorum and conviction. He would open by talking about the pain he feels for those suffering the tyranny of deadly ideas -- both to human life and the soul -- during exchanges. We need more of what he did. We need to love well, even in the public square. The antithesis is why he’s dead. As the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, may his blood be a renewal of our civic life -- which must start with a revival in our hearts.

This Is How You Argue About Abortion

Wednesday night, I watched videos of Charlie Kirk debating abortion on, mostly, college campuses, as he did. He was remarkably calm. He was respectful. Often the student who approached him -- at his invitation -- didn’t respect him back, didn’t seem to care much who he was or what he brought to the table. Kirk communicated compassion and most important encountered the person in front of him. I’m not Charlie Kirk, but I know it’s super easy when you are at a speaking event to get overwhelmed by the crowd. You can find yourself looking over shoulders, not because you mean to, but because you reflexively need to know what you’re walking into. Some of the young women, in particular, assumed a credential they didn’t actually have -- the right to declare truth simply because they are biological women -- as they might put it. He knew that there were layers of pain that the militantism was masking, not very well. He wanted something better for them. He knew that women, and children, deserved better.

I wrote a little here, click on it and share it most especially for the links. Send it to young people. Send it to people who start their he-shouldn’t-have-died statements with “I didn’t agree with him, but . . .” How many of us go to hostile venues willingly, welcoming people to argue with us about the most consequential issues of the day -- of life? He died doing the right thing. He died showing us how to do politics better. You don’t have to be MAGA to recognize that, celebrate what he modeled, and, yes, condemn the assassination of someone for voicing his opinions and sharing his values. He was doing what Christians are called to do. You don’t have to canonize him, either, to recognize that he died exercising his right to free speech -- respectfully, even graciously.

I know I’m almost unspeakably jarred by Charlie Kirk’s death. And I’m not a twentysomething who was inspired and encouraged by him, or one of my many friends and colleagues who considered him a good friend.

The most important thing we can do is pray -- especially for his family. And start being courageous about everything.

A Secular Version of Kirk? I’m often impressed with what I see from the Secular Pro-Life website and organization. Kirk was Christian and often talked about the sacredness of human life, and being made in the image and likeness of God. But he knew that the necessity to protect human life was not merely a responsibility of religious believers. He would talk science. He would talk reason. He would walk with people where they were. They didn’t always want to join him in good faith, but a lot of the power of his witness was that he bothered to have enough respect for people -- including people who disagreed with him -- to show up in the first place. There’s something of that with the Secular Pro-Life folks. Here is an important post they shared this week about the wounds of abortion that often lead to the type of pro-abortion activism that only leads to further immiseration, for the advocate and for other women, and also for men, apart from the unborn babies who wind up dead. And it reminded me of this exchange Kirk had with a woman who regretted her abortion. He had a heart for these women. He had a heart for those lied to and exploited and hurt by the culture of death.

‘The Only Good Pro-Lifer Is a Dead One’

For extremely good reason, we have had our concerns about our cousins across the pond -- deluding abortion laws and moving to legalize assisted suicide. But this weekend, the pro-life movement stood up strong at the March for Life UK, with the support of some major (Catholic) religious leaders.

Still, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, co-founder of the UK March posted on social media about some of the protests of the march last weekend:

When we hear about tragedies such as Charlie Kirk’s murder, we wonder how things like this can happen. I’ve also seen journalists blame the culture in America. I say that part of the problem is we never nip these things in the bud.

Vaughan-Spruce posted a photo of pro-abortion protesters at the March for Life UK last Saturday. There were “The Only Good Pro-Lifer Is a Dead One” T-shirts. “Yet pro-lifers are censored for silently praying on a public street,” she wrote. “It’s no wonder those who support abortion feel emboldened in their hatred and what they can do to manifest it.”

And she knows of what she speaks. She herself has been arrested and tried for bowing her head in front of abortion facilities.

I hesitate to even write this, but I’ve had to confess cowardice in the face of threats. At a particular time when I was receiving an uptick in threats and protests -- and had some physical close calls at prayer vigils that were protested -- I put a halt on some of my public anti-abortion activities in the New York City area. It might have been prudent. I wasn’t changing the world with a panel here or there. But a platform is a platform, and cowering in fear is the opposite of fortitude. What I always aim for is encouraging people away from misery. And that’s what Kirk was about. And that’s what we should insist on being about -- and we won’t ever have a platform without making wise use of it.

And, why, by the way, has March for Life UK been censored on X? Because of a “graphic violence or adult content.” Of a crushed skull of an unborn baby killed by abortion? No. Because of a photo of a healthy, happy baby in the womb of his mother.

Now is the time to rigorously defend free speech.

Around National Review

Charlie Kirk Was a Joyful Warrior for Life

We Need the Love of Good New York Women

If You Are Going to Share a Charlie Kirk Video, Share This One

‘Calm Your Anger and Forget Your Rage; Do Not Fret, It Only Leads to Evil’

Charlie Kirk Is Dead. Just Stop Everything and Pray.

Remembering WFB: Quick Reflections on William F. Buckley Jr. Stamp Day

God and Man at Yale — with a William F. Buckley Jr. Postage Stamp

Tim Kaine Is Unable to Say What Makes America Beautiful

An Endearing Memory

Charlie Kirk thought South Park’s pro-life parody of him was pretty good.

And We Need Encouragement

Since we learned that Kirk is dead, I’ve been hearing Father Richard John Neuhaus in my head. He came to the pro-life movement (a civil rights movement) via the civil rights movement. It wouldn’t hurt to have a sermon from him right about now. He could talk to us about the love of Jesus on the cross, as he did in Death on a Friday Afternoon. He could also insist on us not wearying or resting, as he asserted in 2008 at the National Right to Life Convention. I mentioned it in an earlier edition of The Lifeline, and here’s a different excerpt than I highlighted then:

Against the encroaching shadows of the culture of death, against forces commanding immense power and wealth, against the perverse doctrine that a woman’s dignity depends upon her right to destroy her child, against what St. Paul calls the principalities and powers of the present time, this convention renews our resolve that we shall not weary, we shall not rest, until the culture of life is reflected in the rule of law and lived in the law of love.

Charlie Kirk talked about his desire to “love on the lost.” That was not patronizing. That was expressing his desire to be a vessel of Christian love on the most neuralgic and intimately violent of issues.

Upcoming

The Sisters of Life have something for your schedule this Sunday if you are in the NYC area. It’s the 50th anniversary of the canonization of New York saint Elizabeth Ann Seton. The Sisters have a mission at her shrine near Battery Park, and they will have an open house there -- with a relic and prayer, among other things –--after Mass at St. Peter’s, the 9/11 church, for lack of a better way to describe it. I went there for many years for memorial Masses after the attack on the United States. We need Elizabeth Ann Seton -- her example and her intercession -- and we need the tender, radical love the Sisters of Life help us live. Goodness, do we need that. I put the details in this post. See you there?

My conversation with Peggy Noonan is coming up in just about no time now, also in New York City. Sitting with the author of Patriotic Grace, among others, could not be more perfectly timed.

I’ll be in Chicago emceeing the Aid for Women dinner there just before the event with Peggy. Here is a tweet from them on Kirk’s murder. Here is information on the dinner.

Time is running out to apply to be a speaker at next summer’s National Council for Adoption annual convention in D.C.

Join me at the Leading with Love conference at the Catholic University of America, also in D.C. this October 8. Information here.

We Must Sow Peace on Campus

I’m feeling more of a responsibility to show loving care to college students after this week. “What Is Life in America After Charlie Kirk?” I’m thinking and praying on that now. Open to other ideas. Email me at klopez@nationalreview.com if you want me to speak with your students or others -- in person or virtually. Ask your favorite college student what he needs to hear right about now. Besides: Keep doing the right things.

Reach out to friends who consider themselves pro-choice and introduce them to this newsletter. Maybe we can all make something of the connection. We sure need more of them. Sign them up to receive The Lifeline weekly here.

Thank you and God bless you. Let’s all pray for peace -- especially in human hearts.