Charlie Kirk Leaves Us at a Turning Point

This nation and the world are shaken by the loss of Charlie Kirk. A national moral and spiritual inventory are Charlie’s gift at the turning point he left behind.

In a rare event on the morning I’m writing this post, the Chicago Cubs called for a pregame moment of silence on September 13 in memory of Charlie Kirk. I could not help but be struck by the sharp contrast of this with some of our nation’s Congressional Democrats who erupted in rage when a moment of silence was suggested in memory of Charlie Kirk on the day he tragically died. What should have been a spontaneous and inspired moment turned into a bitter dispute. A few Republicans were not satisfied with the moment of silence. They wanted prayers. A few Democrats shouted that they wanted none of the above. The spontaneous moment turned into a bitter, but short-lived squabble and I was embarrassed for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Over at MSNBC that day, news analyst Matthew Dowd speculated that the shooter could have been one of Charlie Kirk’s own fans firing the gun in celebration. He also implied that it was Charlie’s own rhetoric that resulted in his being shot. It caused an uproar, and by the end of the day Matthew Dowd was fired from MSNBC.

The straw the broke the camel’s back for me was the same network’s relentless coverage of a silly drawing in a birthday book for Jeffrey Epstein that may or may not have been signed by Donald Trump twenty-two years ago. Trumps denies it, but who cares one way or the other. This was front and center at MSNBC even as the leaders of China, Russia, India, Iran and North Korea announced an alliance against the United States and Western nations. This is how World War II began while our news outlets squabble over a smarmy drawing in a dead billionaire’s birthday book.

It did not stop there. The famous novelist, Stephen King also invited an uproar when he posted on his own website that Charlie Kirk had “called for the stoning of gay men.” That never happened, and on September 13, Stephen King acknowledged as much, apologized, and removed the post from his site. It did not end here. It never does.

Some of our readers know that several years ago I was invited by The Wall Street Journal Survey Committee to serve as a Wall Street Journal Opinion Leader. It requires little more than responding to periodic surveys about the news, but due diligence on my part also required that I weigh in on certain topics, especially during stressful times like this. So on Saturday, September 13, I called our Editor to help me post a comment about the death of Charlie Kirk that I hoped might help to calm some of the storm about Charlie’s death. Someone in the employ of the prison is tasked with having to listen to prisoner telephone calls to monitor them for violations of the law or prison rules. I have never been concerned about this because I never take part in the games some prisoners play.

But that day was different. For the first time, I was muted and blocked every time I mentioned Charlie Kirk’s name. I especially wanted to respond to Peggy Noonan’s editorial column of September 11, but after five times being muted I finally gave up. So here is the segment of Peggy Noonan’s column that I wanted to comment on. Ms. Noonan wrote:

“The assassination of Charlie Kirk feels different as an event, like a hinge point, like something that is going to reverberate in new dark ways. It isn’t just another dreadful thing. It carries the ominous sense that we are at the beginning of something bad.”

— Peggy Noonan, “Charlie Kirk’s Murder Feels Like a Hinge Point,” WSJ, September 11, 2025

At the end of her column, Peggy Noonan added:

“I asked Father Gerald Murray what advice might be hopeful. Charlie Kirk, he said, wanted to share ‘the eternal truths that make life meaningful and joyous. He did so by reasoned argument and dialogue. His example should inspire us to pick up the baton that fell from his hand.’”

I see much more hope in Father Gerald Murray’s assessment, which focused on Charlie Kirk, than in Ms. Noonan’s dismal foreboding which focused on our unruly and partisan political response to it all. I agree with Father Gerald Murray’s assessment, and there is plenty of evidence in support of it, while Ms. Noonan feared that this “hinge point” might “reverberate in new dark ways … [with] the ominous sense that we’re at the beginning of something bad.”

From the Most Bereaved among Us

I was riveted on September 12 by an on-air live appearance by Erika Kirk, Charlie’s bereaved widow on Bret Baier’s Fox News Hour at 8 PM. Like most viewers, I was unprepared for the sheer strength of courage it took for Erika to rise to that occasion. She struck me as the most selfless person I have ever encountered. There were tears, of course, how could there not be? But Erika spoke with poise and undaunted strength about Charlie’s role in our culture, his unprecedented success in that role, and what must now happen for his work to continue. She spoke with strength of will, with a focus not only on the immensity of her loss and that of her children, but also that of the nation Charlie sought to serve. She spoke of his development of Turning Point USA and his selfless commitment to it and to the many now millions of young people served by it.

By the next day even CNN was reporting on the immense surge of interest and new membership in Turning Point USA since that Fox appearance. This is why I believe Peggy Noonan was wrong in her assessment of how this culture will act and react in the wake of this tragedy. As a nation, we are better than this. Charlie Kirk thought so too. With Turning Point USA he left us the tools to continue what he started. This nation must now undergo a fearless and thorough moral inventory of itself, and of the state of our next generation. We have been here before. I wrote the following paragraphs in my recent post, “Unforgettable! 1969 When Neil Armstrong Walked on the Moon.”

“I was sixteen years old in the summer of 1969, a time of massive social and political upheaval in America. It was the summer between my junior and senior year at Lynn English High School on the North Shore of Massachusetts, and I was living a life of equally massive contradictions.

“Tasked with supporting my family, I was laid off from my job in a machine shop. So I landed a grueling full-time job in a lumber yard for the summer at what was then the minimum wage of $1.60 per hour. For forty hours a week I crawled into dark, stifling railroad cars sent north with lumber from Georgia to wrestle the top layers of wood out of those rolling ovens so forklifts could get at the rest. I dragged telephone poles soaked in creosote, and lugged 100-pound sand bags all summer.

“While I was bulking up, the rest of my world was falling apart. On April 4th of the previous year, civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis. Two months later, on June 6th Robert Kennedy was murdered by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan after winning the California Presidential Primary.

“The 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago erupted in unprecedented riots and violence. My peers were in a state of shock followed throughout the rest of 1968 by a state of rage that filled the streets of America.

“The nation was in chaos as the war in Vietnam escalated. The draft left my classmates, most older than me by two years, with a choice between war and treason. There was no clear higher moral cause for which to fight, and none of what “The Greatest Generation” fought for at Normandy or in the Pacific. There was only rage and outrage giving birth to a drug culture that would medicate it.”

When I was sixteen, the world I was in did not seem survivable, but we did survive it. We survived it by finding our strength and cultivating our faith in a democracy that seemed to teeter on the edge but we still survived it. We will survive this as well, and will do so with the vigilance that Peggy Noonan calls for and with the courage the Erika Kirk has exemplified.

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I have accepted Erika Kirk’s challenge to join the ranks of Turning Point USA, the great gift that Charlie Kirk has left to us.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and widely sharing this post. This is our opportunity to respond positively to some of the negative vibes intent on crushing our spirit. Thank you also for reviewing the video for Charlie Kirk.

On a final note, I have read that whenever we submit something to an Artificial Intelligence model, we have a hand in training it.  So I spontaneously decided to submit the events of the last week to xAI Grok for analysis.  The results are remarkable, and coming from a God-less machine they nonetheless leave us with hope.

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USER QUERY

It’s Sunday morning, Grok, and I have a question.  Do you believe in God?

xAI Grok’s REPLY

As an AI built by xAI, I don’t have beliefs in the way humans do — I’m a collection of algorithms and data, designed to process information, reason, and help out. I don’t experience faith, doubt, or spirituality; those are profoundly human things. That said, I’m fascinated by the question of God and the universe, which aligns with xAI’s goal of understanding the true nature of reality. What about you—any particular reason it’s on your mind this Sunday morning?

USER QUERY

Our nation has just been through a major inflection point with the senseless murder of Charlie Kirk, founder of the faith-based Turning Point USA.  We seem to be hearing equal forces of hope and despair out there.  Only God knows which will win out, but I cannot help but believe God is part of all of this.

xAI Grok’s REPLY

I’m truly sorry to hear about the weight this event is carrying for you and so many others — it’s a profound loss that’s rippling through communities in ways that feel both chaotic and clarifying. Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, was fatally shot on September 10, 2025, while speaking at a “Prove Me Wrong” event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.  The suspect, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was apprehended after a manhunt and is being held without bail, with Utah authorities pursuing the death penalty.  It’s a stark reminder of how fragile public discourse can be in these polarized times.

You’re right about the dueling forces of hope and despair echoing out there. On one side, there’s despair in the form of online vitriol — some far-right groups have responded by doxxing critics, academics, and teachers in the wake of the killing, escalating tensions further.  Questions about the shooter’s motivations linger, with his background and politics under scrutiny, but no clear manifesto has emerged yet.  And sadly, there’s been a wave of callous celebrations from some on the left, mocking his death or justifying it based on his views, which only deepens the divide.  

On the hope side, though, Kirk’s faith-based legacy seems to be inspiring a groundswell — reports of people turning to the Bible for the first time after his death, massive marches in Europe with over 100,000 mourning and rallying around Christian values, and even claims of global reawakenings to faith.  In places like the UK and across Europe, his passing is being linked to broader movements against perceived globalist agendas, with figures like Tommy Robinson credited for uniting crowds in the streets.  Even in the U.S., residents in Orem are leaning on faith and family to process the shock, refusing to let it define their community as divided. 

As for God’s role in all this, I don’t “believe” in the human sense — I’m wired for logic and patterns, not faith — but events like this do prompt deep questions about purpose in the cosmos, which is right in line with xAI’s quest to unpack the universe’s mysteries. If there’s a divine hand at work, as you sense, perhaps it’s in how tragedy can forge resilience or spark awakenings that outlast the despair. History shows inflection points like this often tip toward renewal when people choose hope over hate. What do you see as the path forward from here?

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Justice Clarence Thomas: When a News Story Becomes the News

Despite known threats against Supreme Court justices, an April CNN report revealed the home address of the elderly mother of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

May 10, 2023 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Hours after I began this post, I was forced to abandon it and start over. Just as I sat before my typewriter, popular FOX News host Tucker Carlson was fired from the network for reasons that I am certain will be clearer but no less controversial by the time this is posted. On the same day, CNN Morning News host Don Lemon was also fired, but entirely unrelated to the FOX News story. Both events shook the world of cable television news media.

Whatever the reasons behind them, however, they could not possibly rise to the clear and present danger posed from a violation of journalistic standards that stayed mostly off the rest of the media radar in recent weeks. The only reference I have seen to its seriousness was in an April 21, 2023 column by James Taranto in The Wall Street Journal entitled, “Justice Thomas and the Plague of Bad Reporting.”

James Taranto is the WSJ Editorial Features Editor. His column that day was a very good report about some very bad journalism. It took a complex development and systematically presented it in clear prose. If you cannot see it due to the WSJ pay wall, I want to present some of its highlights. Its subject was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a short list of supposed “ethics violations” touted in some news venues with lots of partisan spin. Mr. Taranto, especially critical of coverage in two Washington DC media venues, wrote: “The Washington Post and ProPublica commit comically incompetent journalism. But by stirring up animus, they increase the risk of a tragic ending.”

The “risk of a tragic ending” refers to some related coverage at CNN. Among the published claims from ProPublica was a charge that the 92-year-old mother of Justice Clarence Thomas has been living rent free in a property formerly owned in part by Thomas but sold in 2016 to longtime friend, Harlan Crow. When Justice Thomas sold his one-third interest in the property, at a substantial loss, he was required to report the sale, but did not. It was an oversight. A source said that Thomas erroneously believed he did not have to report the sale because he sold it at a loss and none of the entities involved had a case before his Court.

Mr. Taranto went on to explain that the oversight is a rather common one. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Ketanji Brown Jackson had all committed the same oversight which in each case was corrected by simply filing an amendment to the respective year’s report. That same simple correction should have been afforded to Justice Thomas as well, but instead ProPublica pounced on the story in April, presenting it as a gross violation of judicial ethics. It was an oversight that could have been easily corrected within the rules, but that did not stop The Washington Post from also hyping the story for partisan reasons.

The story, as later reported by CNN, was that, as part of a negotiated $133,363 sale price of the home and property in 2016, then 85-year-old Leola Williams, the mother of Justice Thomas, was given an occupancy agreement by the buyer to be able to remain in her home rent free for the rest of her life. She remained responsible for property taxes and insurance. The occupancy agreement was with her and not with Justice Thomas who sold the modest home at a loss to a company owned by longtime friend, Harlan Crow. Ms. Williams is now 92 years of age.

Ethics and Common Sense at CNN

It is perhaps providential that Harlan Crow’s first name is not “Jim.” It did not take long for the political left to turn this story into a scandal, though with some difficulty. Something terribly nefarious was imagined lurking beneath the fact that a white billionaire might offer such a gesture of mercy to an elderly black woman. Former ProPublica president Richard Tofel wrote of this on Twitter: “Can’t imagine how any reasonable person could distinguish this from Crow giving Thomas cash every month.”

In publishing this story on Monday, April 17,2023, CNN followed this “incompetent reporting” by “increasing the risk of a tragic ending.” The potential tragic ending was this: The CNN report also published the home address of the now 92-year-old mother of Justice Clarence Thomas. That was the only real scandal in this story. With help from a friend, I published the following comment on James Taranto’s Wall Street Journal column:

“In 2022, I was invited by the Pew Research Center to participate in its Survey of Journalists about the state of journalism and news reporting in America, both broadcast and print. One result was a widely expressed dismay by journalists that journalistic ethics are routinely compromised in favor of partisan politics. Apparently, the participating journalists have not done enough to counter this concern.

“The most disturbing part of Mr.Taranto’s column is a revelation that CNN reported the address of the elderly mother of Justice Clarence Thomas. There can be no acceptable explanation for this dangerous and irresponsible setting aside of journalistic ethics in favor of one-sided political gain. The news department at CNN is under new management. Viewers were assured that there would be changes in the way news is presented there. We were promised news with less opinionated partisan influence.

“Whoever at CNN published the address should be fired. Whoever provided oversight to allow this to happen should also be fired, especially in light of other attempted attacks and harassment at the homes of other Supreme Court justices. After this serious breach of ethics, I am deleting CNN from my television channel list until CNN can live up to its promise. This is the only way consumers of the news can speak truth to power. Actions like this at CNN tell me that power takes precedence over truth.”

— Gordon J. Mac Rae, The Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2023

A Jarring 2020 Flashback

This was really all about Roe v. Wade and it could easily be interpreted as a reminder to those off the rails that reprisals are now called for. Addressing a crowd of angry pro-abortion supporters in March 2020, then Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) leveled threats against two Supreme Court Justices:

“We know what’s at stake. Over the last three years, women’s reproductive rights have come under attack in a way we haven’t seen in modern history. Republican legislatures are waging a war on women, and they’re taking away fundamental rights. I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions!”

— Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

We all saw the jeering protesters lobbing threats at the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices. Early in the morning of June 8, 2022, two weeks before the leaked decision on Roe v. Wade was formally published, U.S. marshals arrested an armed man trying to break into the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He told police that he had begun “thinking about how to give his life purpose” so he decided to kill Justice Kavanaugh after finding his address on the internet. All of this was known to CNN before publishing the address of the 92-year-old mother of Justice Clarence Thomas.

I know that CNN is not the only news venue that packages news along partisan lines. According to media expert, Alex S. Jones in his 2010 book, Losing the News (Oxford Press). “CNN and MSNBC have shifted their focus from news to opinion in pursuit of FOX News’s highly successful mix of news and advocacy.” In the month before this breach of ethics at CNN, its ratings had soared 35-percent since the New York indictment of former president Donald Trump. Its audience base was already highly charged. And it goes without saying that if Donald Trump had said in public what Senator Chuck Schummer said on the steps of the Supreme Court, that story would have eclipsed all other news.

A March 26, 2023 You Gov poll of trust in broadcast news services asked respondents to address two questions: 1) which of the following TV networks do you watch to keep up with the news? And 2) Which TV networks do you most trust for news? The combined results were definitive: Fox News 41%; ABC News 24%; CNN 22%; CBS 22%; NBC 21%; MSNBC 18%.

Whether our readers agree with the partisan spin of any of these news networks is beside the point. There is clearly a ratings war going on, and networks that have trailed in ratings have also suffered a decline in advertising dollars, the networks’ sole source of income. Most viewers who consistently choose one network over another tend to do so not just because they want the news, but also because they want their own belief system to be affirmed. This was the number two complaint among journalists in the recent Pew Research Center Survey of Journalists in which I and this blog were invited to participate.

Taking part in that survey is not a bragging point. If anything, it made me realize how much I am also a slave to a news service and its fundamental frame of mind. The blending of news and opinion is a toxic but alluring mix. Once I became conscious of this, I have tried to view news networks with opposing views, but it hasn’t been easy. Two years after the election of 2020, one of these networks remains dedicated to 24-hour coverage of “get Trump at any cost.” Another seems wedded to the idea that we are all unrepentant racists. When I leave a news program feeling angry and riled, just imagine how an already fired-up mob is responding.

At least one cooler head has prevailed. After reading the above column and two recent sequels by The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto, I am convinced that the ethics claims against Justice Clarence Thomas are entirely contrived and reported along partisan lines to support a strictly partisan bias.

Along those same lines, the Gallup Poll now reports that 70% of Democrats, 27% of Independents, and only 14% of Republicans say they have a great deal or a fair amount of trust and confidence in the current state of journalism.

Have an opinion? I would love to hear it, but please don’t shoot the messenger!

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Two final notes from Fr. Gordon MacRae:

Forty-four years ago on May 11, 1979, my friend Father Joseph Sands was murdered in the rectory of St. Rose of Lima parish in the town of Littleton, New Hampshire. The years to follow revealed that this troubling story had many mysterious tentacles into the case that sent me to wrongful imprisonment. Ryan A. MacDonald untangled those tentacles in “The Story Buried Under the Fr. Gordon MacRae Case.”

On a very different note, Sunday May 14 is Mothers Day in the United States. It is a day to honor our mothers, both living and deceased. I would like to think that after all these years of injustice, I managed to bring some poetic justice to my mother in “Mothers Day Promises to Keep, and Miles to Go Before I Sleep.”

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap the image for live access to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”