After Charlie Kirk’s assassination last month, public figures faced immediate scrutiny over their reactions. Many people on the political right viewed any criticism of Mr. Kirk as tacit approval of his murder, while praise for his civic engagement became widespread.

In Catholic circles, two prominent bishops lauded his example: Bishop Robert Barron called him an “apostle of civil discourse,” and Cardinal Timothy Dolan compared him to St. Paul. They praised Mr. Kirk’s willingness to debate opponents and speak openly about his Christian faith. Ave Maria University announced that it would install a bronze sculpture of Jesus embracing Mr. Kirk on its campus. Personally, I experienced a Mass in which a priest praised Mr. Kirk without qualification during his homily

For those unfamiliar with Mr. Kirk, such praise may seem like an appropriate tribute to a fallen public figure. But for many Black Catholics familiar with his full record, these endorsements carry a devastating message.

What Many Black Catholics Have Seen and Heard

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.

The Deeper Problem

If church leaders were not aware of Mr. Kirk’s racist rhetoric despite it being documented and public, this raises the concern they may only consume media from sources that are uninformed or worse, unconcerned, about racism against Black people. 

The fact that Mr. Kirk’s anti-Black statements did not come to their attention—or didn’t register as disqualifying—suggests that harm to Black people may not be on their radar as a serious pastoral concern. Issues that affect Black Catholics weren’t salient enough to factor into their assessment of this contentious moment in public life.

It suggests that Black Catholics and concerns about the sin of racism are so peripheral to their worldview that such information never reached them or seemed important enough to investigate.

Black people have appealed to Christian conscience in every way for 400 years, since first being brought to these shores as slaves. They have consistently hoped that white Christians might live up to the demands of the Gospel. They often suffered violence and exclusion for employing natural rights arguments, for pursuing legal and legislative remedies, or for resisting unjust practices as a means of prophetic witness.

It is, then, another bitter betrayal to see and hear praise for Mr. Kirk from Catholic quarters given his poor public witness. It signals that abhorrent views about Black people are compatible with Catholic faith, as long as someone is sufficiently vocal about their love of Jesus. It suggests, although I hope this is not the case, that corrupt beliefs have captured a not-insignificant portion of the U.S. Catholic Church.

To be clear, this is not just about two bishops making ill-considered comments. It reveals a broader pattern where many in the Catholic Church in America have historically failed to see, understand or prioritize the experiences and dignity of Black Catholics. This is not a new problem, but one that is deeply embedded in Catholic culture, practice and institutions.

Hard Truths, Hard Decisions

The question is not whether church leaders have the right to praise Charlie Kirk. The question is whether they understand what their praise permits: the legitimation of racist ideology, the corruption of Catholic consciences and the perpetuation of the same evil that has infected American Christianity since colonial times.

Church leaders may unintentionally become accomplices to rising racial bigotry and injustice. Ignorance of the historical context that makes unqualified praise of Mr. Kirk so dangerous may point to an inadequate formation or seminary training that has not helped form them to love and serve Black people.  

Our Catholic witness in America hangs in the balance. Church leaders can either acknowledge their grave error and work toward genuine reconciliation or they can continue tacitly sanctifying racist speech and injustice. The choice will help determine whether American Catholicism finally confronts white supremacy or remains captured by the same moral blindness that has corrupted Christian witness in our country since its colonial origins.

Black Catholics are not asking clergy and laity to abandon Catholic principles—but are imploring them to live up to those very principles by recognizing that Charlie Kirk’s language about Black people is fundamentally incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Souls depend on how they respond.