Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk are wrong about Catholicism

Editor’s Note: This article was first published on https://kokxnews.substack.com/ but is here republished with citations.

The WASP’s are waking up. But they’re still in need of help.

During a recent podcast, Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk boasted about the “fighting spirit” of American Protestants who are refusing to give up on the United States.

“I’m as pro-Catholic as anyone could be. My best friends are Catholic … Not against Catholics at all … however, this country was found by Protestants, because they think for themselves,” he bragged.

“And they’re the heirs of Martin Luther, who took on the ancient 1500-year-old [Catholic] Church by himself,” he exclaimed.

Carlson went on to note that the Founders as well as those who came after them “believe[d] they communicate directly with God, that their conscience is more important than federal law, and they’re really hard to deal with, and so you have to destroy them.”

To which Kirk shot back: “well, they’re not done yet. There’s still a lot, and I know some.”

Carlson has interviewed many Novus Ordo Catholics in recent years, including Bishop Barron and Cardinal Gerhard Müller (Kirk is an Evangelical by the way).

Many Catholics have been tempted to believe Carlson might be interested in converting. But his comments here seem to be a sign that he’s not going to — at least not anytime soon.

While there is much to admire about what Carlson is doing these days, his and Kirk’s comments indicate that they are ignorant of the real damage Luther inflicted on the world. They also reveal they have the wrong “solution” for America. I’d like to offer this essay as a charitable response to their conversation.

The Founders opposed the Social Kingship of Christ

Second President John Adams once described the Catholic Church as one of the “two greatest systems of tyranny” ever created.

The “Romish clergy” have set themselves up “for the aggrandizement of their own order,” he once said.¹

Presumably, Carlson agrees with these sentiments.

While attending a Latin Mass for “entertainment,” Adams further described Catholics as “poor wretches” who were “fingering their beads, chanting Latin, not a word of which they understood … [and] crossing themselves perpetually.”

In 1765, 27 colonists convoked the Stamp Act Congress to petition King George to repeal his pro-tax policies. Their letter began by acknowledging they were “sincerely devoted” and “inviolably attached to the present happy establishment of the Protestant succession” in the U.K.

A Hessian captain fighting for the British in the Revolutionary War wrote a letter to a friend in 1778. He said: “call this war … by whatsoever name you may … only call it not an American Revolution. It is nothing more nor less than an Irish-Scotch Presbyterian Rebellion.”²

The First U.S. President George Washington encapsulated the spirit of the times in a correspondence he sent to the New Jerusalem Church of Baltimore in 1793. “In this enlightened age and in this land of equal liberty” the “light of truth and reason have triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition,” he said.³

What Washington is saying here is that he was proud that the United States was, as Traditional Catholic author Brian McCall has pointed out, “founded directly opposed to the historical principles of Christendom.”

Carol Robinson, founder of Integrity magazine in the 1940s, noted this as well when she recalled that the United States was created by “not just Protestants, but by Protestants who could not get along with other Protestants.”

The following remarks of the third U.S. President Thomas Jefferson in 1814 serve as a perfect summary of what the Founders believed about Catholicism:

“History … furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government … [in] every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot [the pope], abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”⁴

History can only be properly understood from a Catholic perspective

Pope Pius XII once said, “it is impossible for anyone to expound fully and impartially the history of events and institutions without the light of Christ and His Church shining clearly forth in superhuman brightness.”⁵

We will now seek to do this so Carlson, Kirk, and those who agree with them will understand where they are going wrong.

In his 1884 encyclical condemning Freemasonry titled Humanum Genus, Pope Leo XIII explained that, “the race of man, after its miserable fall from God, separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other of those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth.”⁶

“The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ … The other is the kingdom of Satan.”

Fr. Denis Fahey was an Irish priest who was born in 1883 and died in 1954. He once explained that:

“The real history of the world is the acceptance or rejection by the world of God’s plan for the restoration of Divine Life … History is concerned with individual and contingent facts. In order to discern the supreme causes and laws of the event which historians narrate, we must stand out from, and place ourselves above these events.”⁷

Many Catholics are likely aware that the “Kingdom of God on earth” was greatly persecuted by the “Kingdom of Satan” in the centuries following the death of Our Lord. Masses were often said in catacombs and believers were frequently killed — often brutally — for refusing to deny Jesus Christ as the Son of God.

But the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church and in the Glorious Middle Ages Christendom emerged.

The late Fr. Juan Carlos Iscara — longtime professor at the Society of St. Pius X’s U.S. seminary — once defined Christendom as “the ensemble of peoples who want to live publicly according to the laws of the Holy Gospel.”⁸

Christendom was “the incarnation of Christ in the socio-political order,” he explained.

Fr. Fahey also praised Christendom. He noted that during the Middle Ages “the state fulfilled its obligation of professing that religion which God Himself established and by which alone He wants to be adored and worshipped — the Catholic Religion.”⁹

Fr. Fahey also recalled that it was during this time that the state “grasped the formal principle of ordered social organization” and “the Inquisition was set up to defend … order against the fomenters of disorder.”

Pope Pius XI likewise praised Christendom. In his 1922 encyclical Ubi Arcano, His Holiness said:

“No merely human institution of today can be as successful in devising a set of international laws which will be in harmony with world conditions as the Middle Ages were in the possession of that true League of Nations, Christianity. It cannot be denied that in the Middle Ages this law was often violated; still it always existed as an ideal, according to which one might judge the acts of nations, and a beacon light calling those who had lost their way back to the safe road.”¹⁰

The Reformation was a terrorist attack on the Social Kingship of Christ

In 1884, Spanish priest Félix Sardà y Salvany published a book titled Liberalism is a Sin.¹¹ In it, he blamed Protestantism as the source from which the errors of “liberalism” emerged.

“Protestantism naturally begets toleration of error,” Salvany writes. “Rejecting the principle of authority in religion, it has neither criterion nor definition of faith.”

Protestantism, he continued, is founded on the principle that “every individual or sect may interpret the deposit of Revelation according to the dictates of private judgment.” As such, “it gives birth to endless differences and contradictions.”

Salvany then recalled that Protestantism is “forced to recognize as valid and orthodox any belief that springs from the exercise of private judgment. Therefore does it finally arrive … at the conclusion that one creed is as good as another.” Hence, religious liberty.

Fr. Stephen DeLallo is a priest of the Society of St. Pius X. In 1994, he published a book titled The Sword of Christendom. His insights build on Salvany’s arguments and are provide Catholics with what Fr. Fahey once called “the real history of the world.”

DeLallo observes that there were two main political consequences of Protestantism. “State absolutism resulted because, without the influence and guidance of the Church and her infallible teaching authority, the temporal rulers fell into the abuse of authority.” This “abuse of authority on the part of the rulers led the people into … almost universal rebellion against authority.”

Liberal democracy also emerged because Protestantism empowers “every individual with the ‘natural right’ to choose whichever religion best conformed to his conscience and inner convictions.” Thus, Protestantism necessary lays down the “foundations of religious liberty” and “leads to the establishment of a liberal democratic State, one that would accord this so-called right of religious liberty to its citizens.”

Society began to decay after Luther’s ideas infected more nations

19th century American Catholic intellectual Orestes Brownson is an oft-overlooked figure in U.S. Catholic history. This is likely on purpose given his anti-liberal writings. We will hear more from him in a moment.

In the late 1800s, Brownson made the following observation about the impact of the Reformation from a theological perspective.

“Modern civilization is substantially that of the gentile world before its conversion to Christianity. The ‘glorious reformation’ of the sixteenth century was an apostasy from Christ … a return to pure heathenism … this [new] order … places this world before the [next], time before eternity, the body before the soul, the praise of men before the praise of God.”¹²

Brownson would have likely been aware of Cardinal Henry Manning, the Archbishop of Westminster from 1865 until his death in 1892. Manning once said, “for where the Blessed Sacrament is not, all dies … when life is gone the body returns to its dust.” ¹³

This is precisely what has been happening since the Reformation, and not just to Protestantism — which has splintered into thousands of different sects — but to the Western world altogether. Mankind is firmly now on the downslope of history. He is not “progressing” upwards. Rather, as 20th century French philosopher Jacques Maritain once said, “we have been dying for 400 years.”¹⁴

The aforementioned Carol Robinson has drawn attention to this fact in her many writings:

“Like men, societies die; also like men they sin mortally (that is, men collectively turn against God). Our society has committed more and more serious sins. There was a terrible beak with God when Christendom split and half of it fell into heresy … [we are] attending the last hours, not just of a splendid civilization, but Christendom … [this is] why Our Lady keeps appearing. It is the hour of our death, so she comes to tell us that she is interceding for us and pouring graces upon us. She says what you say to a dying man: Repent, do penance, pray, turn again to God.”¹⁵

One of the many rotten fruits of the Reformation is that it paved the way for the emergence of what the prophetic popes of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries condemned as liberalism. Pope Leo XIII alluded to this when he said that the Reformation “threw first of all into confusion the Christian religion, and next, by natural sequence … the precincts of philosophy.”¹⁶

The centuries that followed the Reformation are now incorrectly referred to as the “Enlightenment.” By this it was meant that man had finally overcome the “myths” of religion and that he had come to rely on reason instead of reason and faith to address political, moral, and philosophical questions. Fr. Fahey has used the term “organized naturalism” to describe the modern era, which he has said is paving the way for the anti-Christ.

Catholics today should therefore view Luther and his prideful decision to “take on the ancient 1500-year-old Catholic Church by himself” as ushering in the real Dark Ages, as it was at this time that men started to create false religions, establish philosophical schools of thought, found countries, and rely on ideas wholly antithetical to the Catholic religion.

Outside the Catholic faith everything dies: ‘Without me you can do nothing’

That the Western world began to go sideways after the Reformation was to be expected.

Pope Pius XII explained in his 1950 encyclical Humani Generi that “it is not surprising that such discord and error should always have existed outside the fold of Christ.”¹⁷ Human reason “can arrive at a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God … and also of the natural law” but it is “hampered both by the activity of the senses and the imagination, and by evil passions arising from original sin.”

Therefore, “divine revelation must be considered morally necessary so that those religious and moral truths which are not of their nature beyond the reach of reason … may be known by all men readily with a firm certainty and with freedom from all error.”

Catholic spirituality confirms what Pius XII is teaching here. “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind,” Romans 1:29 states. “God gradually withdraws His graces from those who neglect them,” Dom Lorenzo Scupoli taught in his 16th century classic The Spiritual Combat.

These principles apply not just to individual persons but to countries as well, which are simply collections of persons gathered together in a particular territory.

19th century Spanish political theorist Juan Donoso Cortés (1809-1853) delivered many speeches and wrote many essays during his lifetime that synthesized Catholic spirituality and the Church’s political doctrines. He once said, “liberty, real liberty, the liberty of all and for all, only came into the world with the Savior of the world.”¹⁸ He also called the Reformation a “great scandal.”

Below are two excerpts from remarks he gave. They serve as a stark reminder to not just Carlson and Kirk but to Catholics who also hold the Founders of the United States in high esteem that nations that do not take into account the Catholic faith are wholly incapable of providing any semblance of real order and a lasting civilization.

“The cause of all your errors, Gentlemen, lies in your ignorance of the direction which civilization and the world are taking. You believe that civilization and the world are advancing, when civilization and the world are regressing. The world is taking great strides towards the constitution of the most gigantic and destructive despotism which men have ever known. That is the trend of our world and civilization. I do not need to be a prophet to predict these things; it is enough to consider the fearful picture of human events from the only true viewpoint, form the heights of Catholic philosophy.”

“True progress consists in submitting the human element which corrupts liberty, to the divine element which purifies it. Society has followed a different path in looking upon the empire of faith as dead; and in proclaiming the empire of reason and the will of man, it has made evil, which was only relative, contingent and exceptional, absolute, universal, and necessary. This period of rapid retrogression commenced in Europe with the restoration of pagan literature, which has brought about successively the restoration of pagan philosophy, religious paganism, and political paganism. At the present time the world is on the eve of the last of these restorations — that of pagan socialism.”

Christ or Chaos: There is no alternative

English Bishop John Cuthbert Hedley, O.S.B. (1837-1915) once said:

“The religion of Jesus Christ — which Catholicism alone adequately presents to the world — is intended to take possession of every heart, to influence all the actions of men, and to be the grand rule and arbiter in all the world’s concerns, whether public or private, whether social, commercial, or political.”¹⁹

The Founders of the United States — many of whom were Protestants but also Deists and Freemasons — rejected the Catholic religion. They supported the view that “the people” are sovereign and that political authority derives from them. They also subscribed to rationalism and naturalism while drawing from liberal social contract theorists like anti-Catholic philosopher John Locke.

Jefferson himself expressed admiration for the French Revolution, which Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre rightly denounced for having resulted in “those who ruled and guided us in civil society in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ [to be replaced] by those who ruled us in the name of the goddess of Reason.” His Excellency also said:

“Thus, for the individual as for civil society, the foundation of law and moral obligation, which is God, was replaced by conscience and by men. It was the end of society!”

Pope Gregory XVI likewise condemned the emergence of liberalism and modern politics birthed from the Reformation with his 1832 encyclical Mirari Vos,

“The divine authority of the Church is opposed and her rights shorn off. She is subjected to human reason and with the greatest injustice exposed to the hatred of the people and reduced to vile servitude … This great mass of calamities had its inception in the heretical societies and sects in which all that is sacrilegious, infamous, and blasphemous has gathered as bilge water in a ship’s hold, a congealed mass of all filth,” he added, referencing Luther and the Reformation he lead.

Only Catholicism can save America

Podcaster Jim Havens has released a video responding to Carlson and Kirk’s interview. He seems to be the only Catholic who is speaking up about it.

Havens admirably said the following:

“Before the pilgrims and Puritans … the America’s at large were founded by Catholics. Columbus was a devout Catholic, and all the leaders of the earliest expeditions and missions were Catholic. I think they had something of a “fighting spirit” as well that ought not be overlooked.

Before the Calvinist Protestants ever got to America, the Catholics already made their mark. The real spiritual foundation of America is Catholic. The political founding of the U.S. is Protestant. That’s a distinction that deserves to be made and known. Yes, we need a “fighting spirit” today … [but] if you build that “fighting spirit” on rebellion against God — even if it is dressed up as freedom of conscience — it’s not going to last.”

Havens continued:

“Martin Luther … rejected the authority of the Church that Jesus Himself founded …. that’s not reform, that’s revolution. And revolting against Divine Revelation, revolting against God, is never a good thing. The Catholic Church is not just one denomination among many … She is the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church that Jesus founded.

Tucker and Charlie … I respect you both … but let me challenge you back: If you want moral clarity, if you want courage rooted in truth, if you want to build a culture that can withstand what’s coming you need the Catholic Church. Because without the full truth that Jesus gave us and the full graces that He pours out for us through His Catholic Church our strength will eventually crumble.”

Haven’s remarks are impressive. He should be applauded for having made them. They remind me of comment made by the aforementioned Orestes Brownson (1803–1876).

In a letter written to Fr. Isaac Hecker in 1870, Brownson said the following.

“Instead of regarding the Church as having advantages here which she has nowhere else, I think she has here a more subtle and powerful enemy to combat than in any of the old monarchical nations of the world. Say what we will, we have made little impression on our old American population … Catholics as well as others imbibe the spirit of the country; imbibe from infancy the spirit of independence, freedom from all restraint, unbounded license. So far are we from converting the country, we cannot hold our own … let the American people become truly Catholic and submissive children of the Holy Father, and their republic is safe; let them refuse and seek safety for the secular order in sectarianism or secularism, and nothing can save it from destruction.”²⁰

This being true, where there is not an altar there is no civilization. Protestantism rejects the Mass as a sacrifice and the reality of Transubstantiation. As such, it rejects the altar and therefore cannot save the United States. Only the Catholic faith and its life-giving sacraments can. Converting America to Catholicism must be our goal. I pray that Carlson, Kirk, and the rest of my countrymen will recognize this.

19th century French anti-liberal Joseph de Maistre echoed these remarks when he said, “where there is an altar, there is civilization.”²¹ This being true, where there is not an altar there is no civilization. Protestantism rejects the Mass as a sacrifice and the reality of Transubstantiation. As such, it rejects the altar and therefore cannot save the United States. Only the Catholic faith and its life-giving sacraments can. Converting America to Catholicism must be our goal. I pray that Carlson, Kirk, and the rest of my countrymen will recognize this.

1. John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765) ↩︎
2. Capt. Johann Heinrichs to the Counsellor of the Court, January 18, 1778: “Extracts from the Letter Book of Captain Johann Heinrichs of the Hessian Jager Corps, 1778-1780,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 22 (1898), 137. ↩︎
3. Washington, George. To the Members of the New Jerusalem Church of Baltimore. January 27, 1793. ↩︎
4. Thomas Jefferson, To Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813 ↩︎
5. Pope Pius XII, quoted in Jean Ousset, Action ↩︎
6. Pope Leo XIII, Humanum Genus, no. 1, April 20, 1884 ↩︎
7. Denis Fahey, The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World, Chapter 6 and Chapter 1 ↩︎
8. Fr. Juan‑Carlos Iscara, “Christendom and Revolution: A Preface for a Catholic Understanding of History, ↩︎
9. Denis Fahey, The Kingship of Christ According to the Principles of Saint Thomas Aquinas, chapter 3 ↩︎
10. Pope Pius XI, Ubi Arcano Dei Consilio, § 45, 23 December 1922, in Encyclical Letters of Pope Pius XI, accessed via Vatican translation. ↩︎
11. Liberalism is a Sin, translated by Dr. Pallen ↩︎
12. Orestes A. Brownson, Introduction to the Last Series, Brownson’s Quarterly Review, Last Series, vol. 1 ↩︎
13. Manning, Cardinal Henry Edward. The Blessed Sacrament: The Centre of Immutable Truth. Page 8 ↩︎
14. Paraphrase of the Letter 51–52 of the Maritain–Massignon correspondence, found Massignon, sentinelle catholique en terre d’islam – L’Orient-Le Jour ↩︎
15. This Perverse Generation  ↩︎
16. Pope Leo XIII Immortale Dei, Section 23 ↩︎
17. Humani, Generis, 1950 ↩︎
18. Donoso Cortés 1962, Speech on Dictatorship ↩︎
19. John Cuthbert Hedley, A Bishop and His Flock (London: Burns & Oates, 1903), 387 ↩︎
20. Brownson-Hecker Correspondence ↩︎
21. Joseph de Maistre, St Petersburg Dialogues: Or Conversations on the Temporal Government of Providence ↩︎