The Catholic Response to the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

[00:00:00] Foreign the assassination of Charlie Kirk clearly demonstrates that we're fighting against truly dark forces and evil forces. How should we as Catholics respond? [00:00:22] That's what I talk about today on, on the podcast. [00:00:26] As everybody knows at this point, hopefully Charlie Kirk, the conservative commentator, the founder of Turning Point usa, was assassinated yesterday. He assassinated doing what he loved to do, what he was very good at doing. He was at a college campus, Utah Valley University, I believe it was speaking to a big crowd, taking questions and things of that nature, when an assassin from about 200 yards away fired a single shot and hit him and killed him. And we don't know yet exactly what the motives of the assassin were. [00:01:02] We can suspect and we can probably guess what they were. Obviously he's a prominent figure who was very effective at promoting the conservative cause, supporting Donald Trump. [00:01:19] And so it goes without saying that it's likely he was assassinated for that reason. [00:01:24] And I think this is, this is, you know, I had as a title in my article today about this and everybody's, I notice everybody else does too, but I do think this is a turning point in our nation's history. I think this is a major event. [00:01:40] A few things we need to keep in mind about Charlie Kirk is the fact is he was relatively a moderate conservative. He was not an extremist. In fact, he held the views of the mainstream from 20 years ago. [00:01:57] The things he promoted and talked about were commonly believed by most Americans 20 years ago. Yet now today he's been vilified as a Nazi, as an extremist. And really it's that village, I believe his assassination. [00:02:19] And so this is something that I think we should keep in mind that I'm going to get worked up. I so I'm going to try calm because I've noticed this really me when this happened and I've talked to a people since any of them really this one, I've talked to parents of young men of the age that Charlie Kirk was addressing. I've talked to young men and young people of this age already and everybody's hit pretty hard. And so I think I am too. I'm going to try not to get too worked up in the podcast. I think we have to at this time we still have to be sober, we have to be prayerful and we have to really ask ourselves what does our Lord want us to do at this time? [00:03:06] Okay, so let me go back though. [00:03:08] Another thing about Charlie Kirk is his whole outreach was about open debate and dialogue, was about non violence, about let's talk this out, let's Have a intellectual discussion in which you present your arguments, I will present mine. He always tried to be respectful of the other side. He. If you've watched any of his debates, often when a person would ask a question that was antagonistical and the crowd would. Charlie Kirk crowd would start to kind of maybe cat call or hoot and holler, he would tell them to calm down. He would tell them, no, let's listen. [00:03:47] This is the type of person he was. And he was assassinated. [00:03:51] So if he was assassinated, the person who is the paradigm of open debate and dialogue, who is relatively a moderate conservative, like I said, he's. He basically just holds the beliefs as Everybody. Everybody held 20 years ago. [00:04:08] And he is targeted for violence. It really does send a message. And in fact, there's something about this assassination. I am not going down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. I'm not anti conspiracy theory. So many have been proven true. [00:04:23] But at the same time, I especially think early on, it just is counterproductive to go down that rabbit hole. I will say this, though. This was not like some of the murders and assassinations, like the shooting at the Minneapolis school or something like that. It's not like that we had somebody from 200 yards away take one shot and then flee. [00:04:48] This is not like a crazy person just opening fire in a fit of madness. [00:04:57] This is somebody who was cold and calculating in how they decided to do it. Now people want to say it was like a professional hit. Don't get me wrong, I couldn't have done this. I don't have the skills. I mean, I. I fire weapons and I'm not that great of a. I'm not that great of a shot. And the average person couldn't have made that shot. However, it's not like it was a shot that only the most qualified sniper in the army could have made. 200 yards out with that type of gun is plausible for more than one person, I'll put it that way. [00:05:30] That being said, though, like in the fact he's evaded capture, I'm recording this live at 3pm on Thursday, the day after it's happened. So it's been over 24 hours now since it's happened. Almost exactly 24 hours since it's happened. And they've not yet captured the suspect. [00:05:44] That I don't think is highly, you know, highly suspicious either, because, remember, this is not an event where the Secret Service was there or they had some FBI presence or some, you know, security presence at all. From what I understand, there's really no security there. [00:05:59] I mean, if you've ever been on campus, you know what campus security is like, it's usually a joke. And so it is very plausible to me that a lone person could think this out and have a plan for escape that would work. Especially since right now the person they're kind of, the FBI is kind of honing in on is they say is a college age person. [00:06:21] They would just fit right in. I saw an image, FBI released an image earlier today of the person. He had like an American flag with American eagle on it. [00:06:31] And so, like, you could very much blend into the crowd and escape. Now, we don't even know if that's the shooter or not. But the point is, is that this was planned out to be done publicly. Obviously, somebody who could do what he did yesterday could have found a way to kill Charlie Kirk privately, could have found him in a restaurant or, you know, going home or something like that. And that, of course, would have been awful and tragic and terrible, but it wouldn't have sent the same message as what actually happened. [00:07:01] This was a message being sent. [00:07:04] If you publicly proclaim conservative beliefs, you are in danger. This was done not just in a I, I believe, and of course this is speculation. I'm not going to claim it's not speculation. [00:07:18] This was not done in a fit of rage or, or insanity. This was done as a message. [00:07:26] And I do think there's a very good possibility that the reason it was done the way it was done, by the person, was to hope for a response from the right that would discredit us, it would lead to riots or whatever. And I do want to say it's interesting. [00:07:45] After George Floyd gets killed, there's riots. After Charlie Kirk gets killed, nobody even thought about riots. Nobody worried about riots. [00:07:54] That's because we're different. That's because the way we respond, the way Catholics, Christians, conservatives respond, is not the same as the left does, as the racist on their side do. [00:08:06] So I think all this stuff is like speculation and I think we should keep it just kind of toned down until we find out more. [00:08:15] Now I want to go back to something I said which was, I do think, as Maple said, this is a turning point. In my article today, I mentioned how I've read a lot of history in general, but I've read a lot of Russian history, particularly the time leading up to the Russian Revolution. [00:08:31] If you look at the time of the late 19th century Russia, and really this extends to most of Europe, it was a time of growing animosity towards the status quo, towards the system. [00:08:43] You know, A lot of anarchist groups doing things. And there's a lot of political assassinations that were either attempted or actually happened. [00:08:52] And this was the purpose of this was to generate a revolution, to create a revolution to upend the current system and to replace it with a new one that was claimed to be better. Usually communists were often behind this. And of course we saw that's exactly what happened with the. And of course there's a political assassination that started World War I and what was happening in the aftermath of World War I. And really that whole time period between the late 19th, early 20th century, what we saw was an upheaval of all political systems. Whereas in the late 19th century we still had a world dominated, a Western world, Russia dominated by monarchies by doing things the way they'd always been done by the by after World War II, I'm sorry, excuse me, after World War I, now we see the rise of liberal democracies in a lot of places, the rise of communism in the Soviet Union and other places. And so we do see that the political assassinations, sadly they worked in the sense that they brought about the political apolitical change, a political revolution. [00:10:00] And I feel like it's very possible we're living in a similar type of era now. [00:10:06] Because the fact is, is over the last, you know, 50 years, probably more and more people have seen the failures of liberal democracy, the failures of our current system. On the one hand, you have people seeing the failures and turning to socialism, turning to more government control, basically more shutting down of dissenting voices, shutting down of anything that reeks of conservatism or keeping the, you know, traditional values. On the other hand, you also see on the right a growing rejection of liberal democracy as well, that it just simply does not protect us, it does not foster traditional values. It does not foster a culture that is conducive to the growth of Catholicism or Christianity, Christendom. [00:10:59] And so we're seeing a dissatisfaction now on the left. It's clearly becoming more and more violent. They want to overthrow our current system by any means necessary. We have not seen that on the right. I'm not saying there's not been any violence on the right, but I am saying it's clearly been one sided for quite some time now. [00:11:18] But you do have to wonder if in response to this and other attacks recently, if there will be a rise in violence on the right. [00:11:27] And so I think this is why it's very important now that as Catholics we take a step back and we're sober and we ask ourselves what should be the response? Because one response is totalitarianism. That's usually how totalitarianism rises, is because there's so much upheaval, there's so much chaos that people welcome a totalitarian government. They welcome a dictator to take over and make things safe again. That's what they want. [00:11:58] And I understand this because the fact is, is that people are angry. [00:12:05] I mean, I was. I had a radio interview this morning about this, and he asked me, the host asked me, what was your reaction when you first heard ice? And we were talking, it was, you know, it's 911 today. It's September 11th, 24th anniversary of 9 11. [00:12:19] And I said it was the same reaction I had to 9 11. My first reaction was shock. [00:12:23] And my second one that followed pretty closely afterwards was anger. [00:12:29] And honestly, I think something's a little wrong with you if you didn't have anger as part of your response to this. There's nothing wrong with that. This is an injustice. This is a act of violence. That is horrible. You should be angry. [00:12:44] And so I'm not going to. I'm not. I want to make sure it's clear. I'm not saying here we need to act like we need to be robots and act like we're not upset, not angry. We should be angry, but we need to model ourselves after our Lord who got angry. [00:13:00] But yet it was a righteous anger, and it was always under control. [00:13:05] It was never rage. [00:13:08] Never did our Lord let his emotions control him. He had emotions because emotions are from God. They're part of the human experience. He had the complete human experience, saved sin. [00:13:18] So he had the emotions of anger, but he didn't let them control him. And I think the same thing is true for us as well. Again, we need to be sober. So how should Catholics respond? [00:13:27] This is, of course, how I feel. This is my opinions. And, you know, there's a live broadcast. Please, in the chat, feel free to give your response as well, and I'll look at some of them and respond to some of them at the end of the program. [00:13:42] I think the first thing that we have to do, we have to respond with prayer. [00:13:48] Yes, I know that's a cliche. I know people don't necessarily even want to hear that, but it's so true. [00:13:56] Any reaction, any response we have that's not based in prayer is doomed to failure, guaranteed. [00:14:03] Maybe it will be successful politically at some point, but it's doomed to full failure of really being the Christian response. [00:14:11] And I will ask you a question that I challenge myself with as well, yesterday when this happened, did you spend the rest of the day on social media and basically, you know, being angry, getting upset, letting that kind of control your life, letting it take away your peace, or did you spend more time in prayer? Was your first response? Okay, let's just continue to kind of seep in my anger. Let me kind of just like marinate in it while I look at social media and say, okay, it was this old guy who did it. All the boomers are the worst. Or is it this, you know, whatever the case may be, Did I look for, for example, reactions of, of the left, horrible reactions from them railing on, you know, Charlie Kirk or celebrating this assassination? [00:14:58] Or did I pray? Did I really spend time in prayer, praying for Charlie, obviously for his soul, first and foremost, for his family, his wife Erica and their two lovely children. I mean, I can't even imagine what that's like for them. We should be praying for them. Absolutely. [00:15:15] And of course, praying for our country, because we know this could have a great impact on our country for the worst or for the better, and we need to pray. That would be for the better. [00:15:25] And then also, did we pray for our enemies? This is a hard saying, and I want to be honest here. That wasn't my first thought. [00:15:33] And who probably won't like me saying this, but I'm giving a shout out to my own son who's 22. He is the target audience of Charlie Kirk. He, you know, he's a conservative. And so this is, I mean, this is the type of person that Charlie Kirk reached out to and identified with. [00:15:53] Well, it was him who texted me and said, we need to pray for our enemies. [00:15:57] And it was a nice little wake up call for me. It kind of put the water in my face and say, okay, Eric. Yep. You know, the wisdom of children. I mean, he's not a child anymore, but he's my child, so I can call him children is sometimes necessary for us. [00:16:10] And so we do need to pray for our enemies. That means we pray for the shooter. We pray for those idiot leftists who are, who are railing on, you know, celebrating Charlie Kirk's death. We need to pray for them because ultimately we have to remember that our enemy is ultimately the devil and the demons. [00:16:33] Our enemies here on earth work for the devil often. [00:16:36] But the best way to defeat them is to convert them. [00:16:41] That's the best way to defeat them. That's the ultimate victory. [00:16:44] Isn't to, like, defeat them politically, we might need to do that, but that's not the ultimate goal. [00:16:52] The ultimate Victory will be their conversion to Catholicism, their conversion to Jesus Christ. [00:16:57] That's what we really want to do more than anything. So we should be praying for them, praying for their conversion, praying for their souls as much as we pray for those on our side. [00:17:08] And also part of prayer. Whenever I talk about prayer, we should always remember we include penance, mortification in that. That supercharges our prayer. In fact, I would say our prayer is pretty much worthless if there isn't some aspect of penance and mortification included in it. [00:17:25] And that can be so many different ways. Doesn't necessarily mean you have to wear a hair shirt or whip yourself or anything like that. Although if you want to do that and the Lord is calling you and you get agreement with your spiritual director, go ahead and do that as well. [00:17:37] But penance, whatever it is a sacrifice we have to make. And I would remind people next week is ember days, is an ember week. So next Wednesday, Friday and Saturday are days of penance and sacrifice. So maybe we could offer those up for the church, obviously, but also for the country. [00:17:54] But it's a cliche, I know, to say prayer first, but that is only. That should be. That's what we start with. If you. If that's all you say, if that's all the advices of a bishop and asks me to pray, I really think that that's just not enough. That's not what we are about. It never has been historically, what Catholics do, we don't just pray. Prayer is the starting point. In other words, if we do anything without prayer, without starting prayer, it's worthless. But if we pray and then we refuse to act, that's worthless, too. I mean, St. James who says, you know, faith alone, faith without works is dead. It's worthless. And so we do need to act. We need to go beyond prayer and penance. Build upon that. We need to resist the evil in our midst. [00:18:39] How do we do that? Now, one thing is, of course, elect politicians who aren't evil, who don't celebrate these things. I mean, my personal opinion is no Democrat should be elected for years now. People who follow me know I'm not a Republican. I'm not some huge Republican fan. I vote Republican often, but I don't consider myself a Republican. And I'm very frustrated Republican Party more times than I am not. [00:19:05] That being said, the Democrat Party is the party of evil. I mean, there's just. I mean, I don't even see how that's a debatable point for a Catholic anymore. Not to see that the Democratic Party is a party of evil and it must be stopped, it must be eliminated from the, you know, from the, at the ballot box. No more voting for Democrats. That just should not be allowed for, not not allowed. Like we should not allow it like physically. But I mean is no right minded person should vote for a Democrat for years until they reform themselves radically. [00:19:38] But I don't think that's really, I'm never one who just says, okay, you know, vote for this person. Because I feel like most of us, there's not much we can do on that front. We vote for our person, maybe we campaign for them, but it's not much impact. I think it must, must be much more about how we live our lives in our communities. [00:19:56] I am not going to have a big impact in Portland, Oregon for example, but I can have an impact in my family, first of all, in my parish, in my community. I can have a greater impact there. Now I have a microphone, literally. And so I can talk to people outside of my community. But for most of us, it really is our family, our parish, our community. That's where we have the impact. And I think that means we need to be willing to stand up much more than we have. We need to be willing to make sacrifices. We need to be willing to step in the face of evil and resist it publicly and forcefully. So for example, your local public library decides to do a trans display in the children's section. Are you just going to keep going library not saying anything or are you going to go up to them and say, no, this is not, this cannot be allowed, or maybe even go there and just take it down yourself? [00:20:48] This might get me booted off YouTube for saying that, I don't know. But the point is stop standing up to this evil. I'm sorry, stop allowing this evil, but stand up to it. [00:20:58] Maybe your local government building does not have their flags at half staff like President Trump ordered through Sunday. Go up and talk to the staff, say why, why aren't your flags at half staff? You know the President ordered this for the, the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Do you support the assassination? Why are you doing this? [00:21:16] Also though, speak up at work. I know a lot of people, I hear this all the time. People don't want to speak up very much because they're afraid they'll lose their job. Maybe they speak up anonymously online. [00:21:27] They don't really speak up at work. [00:21:30] Men, especially men, we have to be willing to risk even our livelihood if we're going to resist the evil in our midst. And that means yes, people start talking. Somebody celebrating the assassination of Charlie Kirk today at work. Did you say something? Did you publicly make sure it was known that what they were doing was wrong and evil and that you. [00:21:51] And you think what, that basically they shouldn't be working there anymore, they should get fired, Somebody like that, in my opinion. [00:21:57] And so if, for another example, do your kids go to a college where they have professors that celebrated this, that, that basically have. Or even set the, the environment where this could happen? [00:22:12] Why are you spending money? Why are you sending them money, supporting them? [00:22:16] Don't send your kids to college like that or high schools or any school. [00:22:21] Pull your kids out of schools that have teachers that support this evil or, and do nothing about it, get the teacher fired. And if they won't fire the teacher, take your kid out of there. [00:22:31] We just have to do more in our own world to say we're not going to put up with this anymore. [00:22:38] And here's the balance, I think is of the Catholic response is we're not a bunch of pansies who just lie down and let this happen. At the same time, we don't embrace the evil methods of our enemies. We don't become like them. We don't fall into violence. [00:22:58] Instead, we have a prophetic witness where we stand against the evil. [00:23:03] And that might mean there will be more violence against us, but like our Lord, that doesn't mean we respond with violence, not the type of lawless violence is what I'm saying. Obviously there's a difference between somebody going half cocked off and committing violence against another person and a police officer, for example, arresting somebody, doing something or something like that. [00:23:29] And so that's, I think, the Catholic balance of yes, we stand up to evil, but we don't use evil's methodology. That's the difference. And another thing we have to remember is, and I've kind of hinted already, this is a spiritual battle. [00:23:47] We have to remember that first and foremost the, the feminist website Jezebel, great name. They actually had an article from a couple days ago, literally just two days ago, saying they paid some Etsy witches to put a curse on Charlie Kirk. [00:24:03] Do not laugh at that. Do not take that as a joke as they might have even been taking as a joke. I don't know. They're probably all witches there, frankly, but that's real. [00:24:14] Don't think that that didn't have a potential impact on what happened. Perhaps the spiritual forces protecting Charlie Kirk and others there were lessened because the forces of evil basically were allowed to have more power because of things like this and we weren't praying enough, we weren't doing our penance and things like that. I'm not saying it's our fault, obviously it's the fault of the evil people, the demons, all that. But the point is, is that we have to realize there's a spiritual battle. That's why we start with prayer and penance. That should be the number one activity each one of us does, is prayer and penance and for specific causes. But it has to be a spiritual battle. We will lose without the Lord again. We might win politically, like perhaps, maybe our guys will sweep office next year again and we'll get a bunch of laws taken care of. But if we don't have a spiritual basis for it ultimately will fall apart or it will be used for evil. This has been, I admit this is, this has been my fear for years, is that if we give the government too much power for what we think is a good reason, it will later be used against us for a bad reason. And I've thought this for many years, but I acknowledge, and I admit this history on X and I'm admitting it here, I acknowledge that there does come a time in which the forces of evil have gotten so great that if you don't resist it with government force, it likely becomes an academic debate because you've been basically destroyed. Your whole movement, your whole way of life has been destroyed. And so who cares about the academic debate about exactly how much power should a government get? [00:25:57] So, whereas I still, I will never stop being suspicious of government power. That's just who I am and my own experiences, I recognize that we're getting to a chaotic point where there has to be an exercise of government power in order to stop it. And if that means one day it will be used against us, they're going to use this, use it against us anyway. So, I mean, that's the thing is they haven't really cared about whether or not they had legal rights to, to use it anyway. And they're going to go outside government power and do things like these assassinations. So I just think that that's something my evolution. I know some people came to this a lot earlier than I have, and that's fine. I'm a slow learner, I admit it. And I will continue to be suspicious of government power, like I said. But I mean, it has to be stopped. It has to be stopped through legal means, through governmental means, but it has to be stopped. [00:26:53] Another thing I want to mention is one of the last videos that Charlie Kirk made, he defended the Blessed Mother. He said that he believed that Protestants under venerated her and that she was really the, the, the antidote to toxic feminism. [00:27:15] And I thought it was beautiful. And I will say this, you know, Charlie Kirk was not Catholic. I know that every time a famous person on our side kind of dies, is not Catholic. There's always talk about, oh, do you really convert beforehand? I've heard conflicting reports. I believe his wife was at one point a fallen away Catholic when they got married. My understanding is, is that she started going to Mass again and that he would sometimes attend Mass. I know this for a fact. I saw a quote of his where he said that he sometimes would attend Mass. [00:27:42] So clearly he was. [00:27:44] And he defended Catholicism, the Catholic Church many times. [00:27:48] He said he understood why young people are flocking to the more traditional churches like Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. He defended the traditional Latin Mass during the Conclave. He was saying he hopes that the next Pope would be more open to the traditional Latin Mass and letting it flourish. So he defended Our lady. And like, I'm not going to say theologically, you know, him not being a Catholic and dying, we can, we can nitpick a lot of things about that. But I am going to say this. Our lady does not forget her defenders at the hour of our death. If we defended Our lady, if we love the Immaculata and did what we could to defend her publicly, she's not going to forget to defend that person at the hour of death. And so whether or not Charlie Kirk ever, you know, prayed to her lady, he probably didn't or anything like that. His wife obviously probably did. [00:28:41] I really think we can have a lot of hope in that. And we can ask Our lady to be, to ask for her son's mercy on Charlie Kirk. And I think that's a beautiful thing to remember and ask Our lady in particular to intercede for Charlie Kirk and intercede for his family. I mean, now we have a mom, a single mom, no father there, with two young children. [00:29:07] Ask Our lady to really, you know, be with her, be with Erica Kirk and watch over her. [00:29:15] Okay, so the last thing I want to say is I want to emphasize again that we need to pray for our enemies, that they be converted. That's the best way to defeat them. [00:29:25] But I want to be clear about this. [00:29:28] That does not mean we dialogue with them. [00:29:31] The fact is dialogue is not part of king Catholic evangelization period. End of story. It was basically inserted in to the idea of Catholic evangelization in the 1960s. My whole book, Deadly Indifference, talks about this. I have a whole chapter dedicated to it about how Paul VI inserted this into and said, this is the way we evange, always have evangelized. It's not true. It's simply not true. And dialogue became the thing that every Catholic leader, church leader, seems to worship above all else. [00:30:01] We don't convert our enemies through dialogue. We convert them, I would say, with the three Ps. Prayer, Penance and proclamation. Prayer, penance, proclamation. I already talk about prayer and penance. Proclamation, meaning we proclaim the gospel unapologetically and forcefully with charity. Yes, but boldly and sometimes. History has shown that proclamation includes potentially tearing down idols like St. Boniface and others. [00:30:36] It doesn't mean that we just sit in our rooms and we never go out, or that we only engage in dialogue with, oh, what do you believe? I'll tell you what I believe and then we'll hold hands and have a cocktail party later. [00:30:48] No, it means Jesus Christ is a savior. He's the only way to salvation. If you believe in a false religion, if you believe in Islam, if you believe in Judaism, if you believe in Hinduism, if you believe in atheism or, or wokeism, whatever, you are on the wrong path and you need to repent and you need to follow Jesus Christ and become a disciple him and enter his Catholic Church. That's what we need to do in proclamation. And that's how we're going to convert our enemies, because they're serious and they're evil. We need to be serious about our good, about what we do. So I think I'll end it with that. But let me get the live chat and see what some people are saying about this. [00:31:24] Okay. T.K. o' Rourke says Steven Crowder said he had a source that trans ideology was etched on the bullets they found. I actually saw that in the Wall Street Journal. [00:31:31] And wasn't Charlie Kirk answering a question about violence by trans activists when he was hit? He was. He did ask, was answered a question about violence in general. [00:31:39] We don't know yet, though. I mean, that's the thing we should know from all the other times things like this happened is, happened in the past. [00:31:48] But the fact is, is that we don't know for sure. I saw actually the Wall Street Journal, which is. I don't really read. I just saw a link to it. Pretty respectful. Said that there was trans ideology etched on. On the, on the bullets. But we'll see. [00:32:04] K. Bear says George Floyd was not killed. He died of an overdose. I know that's. I'M I don't care one way or the other. I just know that I'm talking about the reaction to what happened to George Floyd. [00:32:15] Okay, August TV123 the ghoulish grave dancing by millions is what has made me shook up. How do we share a country with these people? Yeah, I mean, that's what a lot of people are asking. [00:32:25] How you can share a country with a large group of people who are celebrating the assassination of a commentator who literally just talked for a living. [00:32:39] And he was reasonable, what he said. You might not agree with it, but it wasn't like he was. He never called for violence and yet he was shocked. How do we share a country with these people? Honestly, I've long advocate for secession. [00:32:51] Then I think we should split up, let them go their way, us go our way. [00:32:56] I know there's a lot of problems with that solution. I'm not claiming that solution is perfect. [00:33:01] I just. I. But to me that seems the most peaceful way because they're not going to go without a fight. And so the most peaceful way in my mind is secession. But we'll see. [00:33:12] PKK says. I remember that he defended Our Lady. I immediately asked her to come to his aid. That's beautiful. That's exactly the response. As Catholics we should have. I just. [00:33:21] Our lady is going to defend her defenders. [00:33:26] I just. I really believe that James says it's only going to get worse. The left is at war with you and me. Be prepared. I agree. I do think that. That it likely will get worse. We don't know that for sure though. The one thing I will say is I refuse to be a doomer. [00:33:41] I refuse to be a doomer who just assumes that things are going to get like just go downhill and be awful. I do believe in the workings of grace. I do believe our Lord can turn things around. I do believe incidents like yesterday's assassination can actually be used. Can turn for good. God can use them for good. So I'm not disagreeing with you, James, in the sense that I do think it's likely things could get worse and we do need to be prepared. I'm just not going to be a doomer and act like there's no way it couldn't be. [00:34:13] Would you please explain Ember Days? Oh, I'm sorry, Carolyn. Yes, I'd be happy to explain Ember days. So on the traditional calendar, this is for hundreds and hundreds of years. [00:34:21] Four times a year. It's Lucy Crucie. [00:34:25] Oh my gosh. What is it? There's like a Saying that tells you when they are. But one of them is after the Feast of the Holy Cross, which we celebrate this year on Sunday, September 14th. [00:34:37] The Wednesday, Friday and Saturday have always been designated as days of penance. And it's basically kind of connected to the seasons, the idea of a harvest or planting, all that. [00:34:49] It's very much like our lives are cyclical each year. And so it's connected to that. It also has been connected to vocations, to the priesthood. But basically it's four times a year where we take three days, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, where we. We do special extra acts of penance that day, abstinence, fasting, things of that nature. So I would just encourage people really next week to do that for our country. For our country. [00:35:16] Pelomo, I'm sorry, I mispronounced that. Says, I really think there are many on the secular left, far left, that are influenced by demonic. Do not ever underestimate demonic influence. [00:35:29] Don't overestimate either. But I would say most people underestimate it today. There are some who get like. They see demons everywhere, and we shouldn't do that as Catholics. But let's be honest, the. The average person, the average Catholic doesn't really recognize how much the demonic influences people today, can influence people. And I think it's particularly true of what's happening on the left today. There's no question that there's a demonic influence of so many of these people. And we need to recognize that, which is why I said it's a spiritual battle first and foremost. [00:36:02] Daniel Vernon Verna says. Right on, Eric. We must actively publicly witness our faith. Saturday morning, sincere will be a procession. Exaltation of the Holy Cross from OSM Old St. Mary's to Holy Cross Immaculate. Thank you, Daniel, for reminding me. [00:36:17] That's just exactly right. I'm going to be there. At least I plan to be there, God willing. [00:36:22] And what we're going to be doing is we're doing a procession with. We're going to be having rosary, we're going to have, you know, crosses. We're going to have different, you know, holy objects. And we're going to process. It's a few miles downtown Cincinnati. And this was planned, by the way. You know, we did one last year as well as our second annual. And this had not. This is not connected to Charlie Kirk assassination, but it fits very much with it because this is. What's needed, is public demonstrations of the faith. [00:36:47] Do not cower in your homes. Afraid. We need to get out there. We need to. We need to speak out, we need to have these processions. This will be a very prayerful one. It will not involve us like debating people, just involve us witnessing to the faith publicly. I think this needs to be normalized and done more and more. I am probably the biggest supporter of processions in the world. I am convinced that they are one of the most important devotionals we have, the most important things we can do, and I wish there were more processions in the world. In fact, I'm hoping to plan a procession myself at some point in the future. And so I really do believe we should do things like this, be public in our faith. Don't be afraid. [00:37:27] Sean Duffy says, can you be a martyr when you're killed for natural law sentences, even if you're not Catholic? Okay. I got a little bit into this online and I'm a little bit afraid to step into these waters. [00:37:40] I do think there's some debate about this. I personally would not call Charlie Kirk a martyr in the official Catholic sense. I think, you know, you can use the term martyr in a very generic sense, like let's say lowercase M, where you just say, you know, he was a martyr for the conservative cause. That obviously is acceptable. And there's, you know, people understand what you mean by that. But as a martyr, actually a martyr for the faith, that would be, you know, listed in the Martyology type of thing. [00:38:08] I'll be frank. I'm not willing to do that for a non Catholic, at least not somebody who's not part of an apostolic church. [00:38:17] I'm not saying he's not. I'm just a guy with my own opinions. I have some background in this, but I'm not claiming to be the expert on this. So I would not consider him a definitive martyr because, you know, he held beliefs that were contrary to the Catholic faith. Like I've already talked about. I believe Our lady will defend him because he defended her. I. I pray for his soul. I don't, like, condemn him or anything like that. I'm just saying that I'm uncomfortable personally calling him a official Catholic martyr. [00:38:48] I would call him, though. [00:38:51] I would say, obviously he was martyred in the lowercase way for what he believed, more than likely. Like I said, we don't know for sure why he died, but we can guess. And so I do think that he's somebody that can be a rallying cry for conservative values because he did most of the stuff he was standing up for, was on track. It was all good. It's not like he got up there and was saying anti Catholic stuff. He didn't do that. He got up there and he talked about the natural law, about, you know, about men and women, the differences against abortion things. And he, he very much always talked about Christianity, about his faith in Jesus Christ, and he wanted people to follow Jesus Christ. So all those things are great. Again, pray for him. Pray for Charlie Kirk's soul. Pray for his wife and her, his family. And pray for our country. [00:39:37] Okay, everybody, I think I'll wrap it up there. [00:39:40] Let's just keep praying. Let's keep doing penance and let's take action. Let's. Let's proclaim the gospel. Okay, everybody, until next time. God love you.