Gloria Purvis on Charlie Kirk

Gloria is one of my heroes, a committed Catholic convert who tirelessly bears witness to the actual teaching of the actual Church and contradicts the lies of the MAGA Catholic cult and it scandalous witness. Here is a taste of her answer to the question, “What are Black Catholics hearing when church leaders praise Charlie Kirk?“

When Catholic Church leaders, clergy and lay alike, publicly praise Charlie Kirk, many Black Catholics hear them sanctifying a figure who championed rhetoric that served to maintain white supremacy. 

Many Black Catholics hear church leaders holding up as an exemplar someone who trafficked in the same dehumanizing stereotypes that justified slavery, Jim Crow, lynching and systematic exclusion—stereotypes that Black people have been challenging and fighting against since the colonial era.

I am not suggesting church leaders intentionally endorsed Mr. Kirk’s racism or were even aware of it. I am suggesting that their failure in awareness, or in imagining the message their praise would convey, is a wound in the body of Christ, for Black and white Catholics alike.

I am also not suggesting that Mr. Kirk’s racist remarks are a problem unique to him, as they were wholly unoriginal.

Documenting Kirk’s Rhetoric

Mr. Kirk’s rhetoric is not new. It follows well-documented historical patterns of racist demagoguery. 

For example, Mr. Kirk positioned himself as defending white people from “replacement,” claimed white families face existential threats and argued that qualified white people are losing opportunities to undeserving Black people. This victimization narrative provides emotional justification for racist ideology while eschewing moral culpability or accountability.

Mr. Kirk’s characterization of Black people as “prowling Blacks” who target whites “for fun” echoes centuries-old “criminal predator” stereotypes. His claim that certain prominent Black women lack “brain processing power” and “stole a white person’s slot” mirrors post-Civil War claims that Black elevation necessarily means white degradation.

Mr. Kirk’s rhetoric represents the latest threadbare cover for racism. His argument that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a “mistake” that created “anti-white weapons” inverts remedies for racial harm into threats against white people.

The rhetoric that Mr. Kirk employed follows many of the same patterns as those documented by the former undercover detective and author Matson Browning, who infiltrated white supremacist groups and studied how they attract followers. Those tactics start with “love for the white race” rather than explicit hatred at the outset. The hatred will come later. This kind of rhetoric, even if it does not deliberately aim at hatred of Black people, paves the way for it.

For four centuries, white resistance to Black equality has advanced the same core objective: preserving racial hierarchy in defiance of constitutional amendments, federal laws and even God’s plan for humanity. 

Mr. Kirk’s comments are not mere policy disagreements about affirmative action. They are not heated political rhetoric. They are well-worn dismissals of Black people’s equal dignity. They are the building blocks of structural sin.

The Corruption of Christian Witness

Mr. Kirk claimed pro-life, pro-family and pro-marriage values as well as an ardent love of Jesus Christ, which have in turn garnered substantial good will, trust and acceptance from certain parts of the church. I do not doubt the sincerity of his words in that regard; however, a tree must be judged by its fruit and “from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks” (Lk 6:43-45). As such, Mr. Kirk’s legacy of racist rhetoric cannot simply be waved aside, nor can church leaders’ lack of reckoning with it be ignored.

One devastating aspect of church leaders’ praise for such a figure is how it perpetuates the same moral corruption that has infected American Christianity from colonial times until now. 

An 1865 report by Carl Schurz, the 19th-century statesman and journalist who later became secretary of the interior, “On the Condition of the South,” documented how white churches “remorselessly turned blacks out” of buildings that enslaved labor had helped construct, expressing “contempt for negro religion” and believing it “terrible impertinence for the blacks to worship the same God that we do.” In other cases, “pious, well-bred” church members even requested permission to torture freed people while maintaining their religious respectability.

This moral corruption continued through the Jim Crow era, when white churches actively opposed integration while claiming Christian virtue, when some white parishes, without a pang of conscience, forced Black members to sit in the back or in the basement of the church and wait until after all the white parishioners to receive the Eucharist. Such moral corruption is revealed anew when church leaders praise Mr. Kirk. Even if they are ignorant of Mr. Kirk’s dehumanizing language, their praise “sanctifies” his racist rhetoric and gives it a veneer of respectability.

Such endorsements create what Catholic teaching calls “scandal”—occasions of sin that lead others into moral error. When well-known church leaders praise Mr. Kirk as a model Christian despite his racist rhetoric, they provide religious cover for racist thought and behavior. As a result, Catholics who might otherwise recognize Mr. Kirk’s anti-Black propaganda as anathema to their faith are enabled and even encouraged to embrace it while maintaining their religious identity.

This is particularly dangerous because Mr. Kirk’s “reluctant racist” pose—claiming D.E.I. policies “make” him doubt Black people’s competence—allows Catholics to accept and adopt racist beliefs while denying any moral responsibility. His “devil made me do it” excuse becomes a template for others, thereby corrupting consciences while providing plausible deniability.

These endorsements directly contradict multiple church statements. The church strongly condemns the sin of racism as a grave evil and a denial of human dignity. When a bishop or priest praises Mr. Kirk, they not only neglect the spiritual welfare of their flock, they also are perceived at some level as condoning the sin of racism even as they intend on pointing out Christian virtue.

Read the whole thing here.

Just a reminder:

We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man’s relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: “He who does not love does not know God” (1 John 4:8).

No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.

The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, this sacred synod ardently implores the Christian faithful to “maintain good fellowship among the nations” (1 Peter 2:12), and, if possible, to live for their part in peace with all men, so that they may truly be sons of the Father who is in heaven. – Nostra Aetate