The murder of Charlie Kirk has deeply affected everyone, including us. Numerous observations and reflections on the event have been pouring in these days, along with the dismayed spiritual sympathy for his wife and children. The tragedy will not soon be forgotten and will significantly influence the thinking of many, given its numerous implications for many areas of contemporary life. For our part, we limit ourselves to a few considerations from the perspective of the Church’s social doctrine.
Most of the positions condemning the event limit themselves to the assertion of freedom of expression and the demands of liberal democracy. Many observers and commentators see Kirk as a champion of this freedom, a man who had the courage to express his ideas, engaging with everyone in a public debate, like the one he was engaged in at the time of the shooting. This interpretation ignores the content of the incident—that is, what he said and the principles he promoted and defended. Of course, freedom is also a content and not just a form, but taken so generically and understood only as the freedom to express one’s opinion in public, it becomes reductive and even ambiguous. The same is true for those who adopt the perspective of the “American Dream,” of which Kirk’s social and political action was a faithful and honest expression. Here too, we pause a step before delving into the substance. Anyone wishing to conduct an analysis in light of the Church’s social doctrine should not stop there, because both criteria—democratic freedom of expression and the American Dream—need further substantiation. Rather, we must ask whether Kirk’s message was intended to rest on more solid foundations.
Some have observed that his positions on today’s social and political emergencies were varied and did not all deserve equal recognition. This may be true, but the so-called “non-negotiable principles,” even if translated personally, were all there. He fought against the killing of innocent human lives through state-sanctioned abortion, defended and promoted the natural family, wanted “good” schools for children, fought against current post-natural ideologies such as gender or “woke,” warned of the dangers of immigration, especially Islamic immigration, for the destabilization of nations, and so on. We can therefore say that he was not only advocating democratic freedom or the American dream, but also intended to delve into inalienable foundations in which we can see elements of natural law. This connects him more convincingly with the Social Doctrine of the Church.
Charlie Kirk was not Catholic, but an evangelical. For him, at least formally, a Social Doctrine of the Church did not exist, not only because of the lack of a magisterial authority competent to formulate it doctrinally, but also because the relationship between political reason and religious faith is different for evangelicals than for Catholics. Different solutions in this regard can arise from Protestantism: a completely secular and secularized state or a state that directly governs the public dimension of religious life; the faithful may believe that their conscience legitimizes any choice in the public square or that Jesus Christ demands of them consistency in this area as well. From what we know, Charlie Kirk had recovered his adherence to a natural law, still expressed with evangelical overtones, but rather solid because it was grounded in common sense, or rather, common sense. The points he insisted on were actually quite simple, within everyone’s grasp, and he defended them with rational arguments, not just those of faith, asking his interlocutors to tell him where he had gone wrong. On these aspects of his commitment, the relationship with the Social Doctrine of the Church seems consistent.
Connected to this aspect is the public role he assigned to the Christian faith and to God. Even in this area, his attitudes remained evangelical rather than Catholic, because there was no teaching Church between his conscience and the teachings of Jesus. However, it cannot be forgotten that, even in the Social Doctrine of the Church, the Christian religion has a public role, and, against atheistic religious indifferentism, we must fight first and foremost for the primacy of God in the world, as a prerequisite for everything else.
In the flood of news about him in recent days, there has also been some suggestion that he may be embracing the Catholic religion. Some have reported some of his statements regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary, which, along with his friendship with numerous Catholics engaged in public life, could indicate this inner disposition. This, however, raises a question: would the Catholic Church today approve of Charlie Kirk’s commitment? Regardless of the new course opened by Leo XIV, and speaking generally, starting with some American bishops, it’s legitimate to have many doubts about an appreciation of his message. On life, family, homosexuality, gender, assisted suicide, immigration, environmentalism… many authoritative voices in today’s Catholic Church disagree with the ideas promoted by Charlie. They disagree even more with his method, which is likely considered too militant. Not that he didn’t engage in dialogue, as Catholic clergy today claim is a primary requirement; it’s that he engaged in dialogue not just for the sake of dialogue but to allow true ideas to prevail over false ones in dialogue.
Stefano Fontana
