‘When People Stop Talking to Each Other, Bad Things Happen’: Bishop Barron Remembers Charlie Kirk

Bishop Robert Barron took the time yesterday to remember Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated a year ago yesterday. Bishop Barron said that violence takes root when we stop believing in the dignity of the human person. It’s a salient and timely message given everything that’s going on in the world.

Charlie Kirk died with a microphone in his hand—not a gun, a knife, or a grenade, but an instrument of communication. When we stop believing in the dignity of the human person, violence takes its place. A year later, that is still the wound. May he rest in peace. pic.twitter.com/Btx63RD6ks

— Bishop Robert Barron (@BishopBarron) September 10, 2026

“I want to focus a bit on Charlie’s murder,” Bishop Barron said. “The fact that he died not with a gun in his hand, not a knife in his hand, not a grenade in his hand, not exercising violence, but with a means of communication in his hand.

“In witnessing that, whether consciously or not, I think we understand something fundamental is endangered. He liked to go to campuses; he would express his point of view, then he’d hand them a microphone and say, ‘Come on up, argue with me. Come up and debate with me. Prove me wrong.’ And that’s exactly what he was doing the day he died. He was speaking with someone more liberally minded and in the very act of doing that, he was murdered,” he continued.

“This unnerves us, and it should unnerve us, because something in our Western civilization is threatened thereby,” Bishop Barron said. “Something I love that Charlie Kirk used to say, he’d be challenged by a kid who’d say, ‘What are you doing here on campus? Why are you here?’ He would say, ‘When people stop talking to each other, bad things happen.’ When people in a relationship stop talking, divorce happens. When a society stops talking, civil war happens. Quite right, seems to me, and that stretches right back to Socrates and provides a foundation for society.”

Bishop Barron urged lawyers and politicians to uphold and preserve public discourse last year.

During Minnesota’s annual Red Mass last year, I shared with lawyers and politicians the importance of their work in preserving public discourse: https://t.co/1GUqaY3iaD

— Bishop Robert Barron (@BishopBarron) September 10, 2026

There are many politicians and lawyers who have no interest in doing this, sadly.

The microphone is everything the NPC left fears most. https://t.co/nYmoS7OLzf

— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) September 11, 2026

This is correct. The Left has been trying to curtail free speech for years in various ways — calling it hate speech or mis/disinformation — because they cannot debate their positions on facts. It’s all based in emotionalism.

Editor’s Note: Every single day, here at Townhall, we stand up and FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT against the radical Left and deliver the conservative reporting our readers deserve.

Help us continue to tell the truth about the Trump administration and its successes. Join Townhall VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.