Marin County Republicans

2 responses to “Vigils for Charlie Kirk”

1. 

   F. Drouillard

   September 16, 2025 at 7:43 pm

   This was sent to me by Jan Miller, and is intended to comfort many of our readers that remain troubled by the assassination of Charlie Kirk:
   —
   The Exaltation of the Holy Cross
   September 14, 2025

   Dear faithful,
   How do we usually react when life brings us the Cross? Rather like Peter and the Apostles, I would suggest. ”No, Lord, this can’t be!” “This will not happen!” “This must not happen!” “Why me!?” These and similar expressions come to our lips or at least our hearts with surprising speed. And when the pain or the fear overwhelms us, suddenly we hear echoes of Peter on the night of Our Lord’s arrest: “I don’t know the man!” Pretty soon, we may find ourselves fleeing for fear of our lives, but usually just our comfort or our ego, as most of the Apostles abandoned Our Lord at the time of His Crucifixion.
   There is thus precedent for our lack of virtue, but let us not become complacent: like the Apostles, we must realize that the Cross is not optional. It is not a matter of one walk of life that we can choose or ignore, one path that we can go down or avoid.
   The Cross is that necessary condition of our salvation. Just as Our Lord’s crucifixion would have availed us nothing had He not died on it, we will not get to Heaven unless we carry bravely the Cross which Our Lord has prepared for us from all eternity, and carry it to the end.
   Look at Our Lord’s reply to Peter when he would have prevented Him from going to Jerusalem and being killed: “Go behind me Satan thou art a scandal unto me because thou savorest not the things that are that are of God but of men”(Mark 8;33). Christ could not allow His own disciples to not
   understand that the succession of all the events of His life was the realization of a program which had been planned in Heaven, from all eternity.
   Remember the words which He addressed to Peter when he wanted to defend Him on the night of His passion as His enemies were the act of seizing Him: “the chalice which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18; 11)
   It was through the disobedience of one man, Adam, that many were made sinners, according to Saint Paul (Rom. 5;19). So also, by the obedience of one, Jesus Christ, many shall be made just. The first to duty of children is obedience to their parents, and we have disobeyed Our Father in Heaven, after the fall of our first parents. To make reparation for this offense, Jesus accepted wholeheartedly the will of the Father, even though it killed Him.
   It is with a real, personal sadness that I point to a concrete example of such heroic obedience to God’s will from the week which has just ended, as you all know. Charlie Kirk was violently assassinated this week at Utah Valley University. He was murdered for the crime of civil discourse with those who held different views than him on political, moral and religious questions. I don’t know about you, but I feel as though I’ve lost a friend I never met. If you had asked me before the fact, hypothetically, if I would have had this visceral reaction to the death of a public figure I never met in person, I would have told you: “probably not.”
   Typically, when I offer you examples of martyrs, these would be from the ranks of those who lived and died in full, formal communion with the Catholic Church. This was not the case with Charlie, as he was an Evangelical Protestant, but there can be no denying that he was a sincere Christian, that he truly loved Our Lord and sought to spread the faith in His Name.
   He was a tireless defender of the lives of the unborn. He recognized, as do all of us here, that the idea that we can change our biological sex or gender is a lie, from the Father of Lies. He excoriated the failed, atheistic philosophies of socialism and communism, both of which have been unequivocally condemned by the Catholic Church on multiple occasions.
   Encouragingly, in the last months of his life, Charlie even seemed to be moving in the direction of becoming Catholic. He spoke very eloquently in favor of devotion to the Blessed Mother, he recognized that many young people were converting to the Catholic Faith because of its ancient origins, and its unchanging doctrine and beauty which would not give way to the shifting whims of a world of decadence and perversion. He was seen attending Mass with his Catholic wife and children.
   I would like to suggest for your imitation, in particular, his exceeding charity towards his debate opponents. You will be hard-pressed to find a man possessed of a more gentle demeanor and kind respect towards the students who approached him on college campuses to dispute his ideas. He combined this humble charity with such a razor-sharp logic and ease in defending his
   beliefs that he ended up being incredibly effective. He changed a lot of minds. His impact was huge.
   Too huge, it would turn out. It really does speak very poorly for you when you decide that the only means left to you to disagree with someone is to kill them. When you realize you have no solid arguments for your position left, but rather than do the logical thing and change your position, you decide you must violently end the life of your opponent, I would say this puts you on par with the Pharisees who sought by whatever means they could to capture and kill Our Lord. They crucified the Truth Itself because the truth was not in them, and this is what they have done to Charlie.
   When it comes to those whom we have seen in recent days explaining way Charlie’s death because of his supposedly controversial rhetoric, or even worse, justifying his death or rejoicing gleefully over it, I have no words for such abominable behavior.
   These individuals may seem to themselves to be riding high for the moment. In reality, their state of soul is pathetic and deserving of our pity. I have more respect for drug addicts than these people. If ever the whitened sepulchres of souls that Our Lord accused the Pharisees of being had modem-day equivalents, it is these people.
   If ever there were individuals truly afflicted by the same “caecitas mentis” (“blindness of the mind”) of the Pharisees, which prevents an individual from even realizing that he is in a state of mortal sin and thus renders him incapable of repentance, it is these people. Pray for them, for otherwise they are without hope and they will die in their sins.
   Dear faithful, dear friends, you see then that the great drama of this life on earth does not change, essentially. It has not changed from the days of Our Lord’s conflicts and disputes with the Pharisees, it never will change. It is the great drama of the Cross – the war between God and the Devil, between Heaven and Hell. And though the Devil is the Eternal Loser, though we Know that Our Lord has already vanquished Him, he will win some of the battles along the way.
   Some of us he will succeed in killing, even physically, through those who by their sins render themselves his tools. We should give thanks that in the case of Charlie Kirk, the Devil was only allowed this paltry and unsatisfying victory- Charlie’s physical life. He is gone from this earth now, so let us do the charitable thing and remember him in our prayers for the rest of our lives.
   And let us rejoice in that those who die as true martyrs of God are gloriously rewarded in Heaven and at the General Judgement, to the eternal shame of their enemies, who are forced to look them in the eye and admit, in the words of Sacred Scripture: “These are they, whom we had some time in derision, and for a parable of reproach. We fools esteemed their life madness, and their end without honour. Behold how they are numbered among the children of God, and their lot is among the saints” (Wis. 5;3-5).

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2. 

   scrumptiouslya03b6ac5de

   September 16, 2025 at 6:42 pm

   Curious as well. Sadly, in Marin, it almost seems as if this horrid assassination didn’t happen.

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