Why Newt Gingrich Converted to Catholicism

Monday, Aug. 24, 2009
Why Newt Gingrich Converted to Catholicism
TIME

Visitors to the Basilica of the National Shrine in northeast Washington often do a double take when they see Newt Gingrich and his familiar shock of white hair slip into a pew for the noon Mass on Sundays. The former Speaker of the House is known for many things, but religious zeal is not one of them. In fact, the social conservatives who fueled his Republican revolution in 1994 often complained about Gingrich's lack of interest in issues like abortion or school prayer.

This past spring, however, after several decades as a nominal Southern Baptist, Gingrich converted to Catholicism. With the fervor of a convert, he has embraced the role of defending both his new faith and religious liberty. In his 2006 book Rediscovering God in America, Gingrich lambasted what he calls the "secular effort to reject any sense of a spiritual life as mattering." And days before he officially joined the Catholic Communion on March 29, he was among the first to criticize the University of Notre Dame for inviting Barack Obama to speak, Twittering (of course): "It is sad to see notre dame invite president obama to give the commencement address since his policies are so anti catholic."

Gingrich's spiritual awakening has struck more than a few political observers as a bit of positioning for the GOP nomination in 2012. (In the first half of 2009, the former Speaker raked in $8.1 million through his political committee, far outpacing his party rivals.) While he wouldn't be the first to experience a conversion on the road to Des Moines, there are simpler ways of understanding the new godly Gingrich. American Catholicism has been losing members at a remarkable rate; an April 2009 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life report found that for every person who joins the Catholic Church, four others leave. But a steady stream of high-profile political conservatives have bucked this trend by converting in the past decade, including columnist Robert Novak, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback and CNBC host Larry Kudlow. Unlike Evangelicals, for whom conversion is often an emotional, born-again experience, Catholic converts tend to make more of a considered decision to join a theological and intellectual tradition. "Conservatives are especially receptive to the promise of there being some capital-T truth that one can embed one's convictions in," says Damon Linker, a former editor of the Catholic journal First Things.

Gingrich describes the appeal of Catholicism for him in just these terms. "When you have 2,000 years of intellectual depth surrounding you," he told me on a recent summer morning, "it's comforting." There's also cachet in conservative political circles to being Catholic. Until their deaths in the past year, Father Richard John Neuhaus and National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. presided over an intellectual haven for conservatives put off by Evangelicals who rail against experts and élites.

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He may march to the beat of St. Peter these days, but Newt is still Newt. "I don't think of myself as intensely religious," he says. Asked about Pope Benedict XVI's latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, the first economic and social statement of his papacy, Gingrich admits he hasn't yet read the whole thing but opines that the parts he has examined are "largely correct." And before Mass one July Sunday, Gingrich took a seat near the aisle and bowed his head. But he wasn't praying. Instead, the famously voracious reader was sneaking in a few pages of a novel until the service began.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1916297,00.html

My thoughts on it are not a criticism of all people in roles of leadership private or public, but on how in those roles think.

There are people that have talents in governance and the idea of specialization means it makes sense some would be better at ruling either private or public sector.

The problem of elites as I see it is when they claim to be better or deserve more, and lose empathy for other groups, removing them from their role as servants, and instead make them more like problems then actually helping things.

Many in the top 1% are good people doing good things, many are not, that is also true with the 99%, so elitism for specialization makes sense in my view, but not for thinking a person is actually a better person in the eyes of God.

she probably wouldn't swallow unless he converted.

If Newt thought being a Druid would somehow be politically expedient, he'd have a tree growing out his ass before you could say "Old wood."

Of course, now that he has converted and been told that if he divorces wife is-it-three-or-four(?) he will go to Hell since they were married in the Catholic Church, maybe they will stay married.

educated, but in fact his thinking is facile and superficial. He is half educated. I am not referring to how many degrees he has. I am talking about education in terms of the ability to criticize one's own conclusions and thinking processes. He is prone to pronouncing formulas -- to applying rigid theories to live. That is probably why he likes Catholicism. There is a set answer for everything. You just memorize a lot of dogma. You don't really have to make much effort to think for yourself. You just repeat the answers until you "believe" them.

His contract on America did not work very well.

It is full of authority and hierarchy and ritual and rules. You don't have to think for yourself or make your own decisions. All the authority comes down from the top in a very rigid, set way. You are told what to believe and do and think, and if you succeed in believing and doing and thinking as you are told, you get into Heaven when you die; that's the general teaching, anyway. If you stray, you report your strayings ASAP and are told exactly what you must do to "make up" for them and get back on the right path again. It must be a great comfort to someone who wants the reassurance of knowing he is doing everything the "right" way.

Also, the Catholic Church, like many others, professes to be the one true Church, which means that if you belong, you can also enjoy the assurance that your religion is correct and that it's everyone else outside your religion who is misled, not you. You're right, they're wrong, that's it, end of story.

I don't think Newt would be happy in a Christian church that asked him to read and think and discern truth for himself, or compelled him to read the Bible and try to determine what its messages are for the modern person. He just wants to be told, because he needs to know he is doing the right thing, and he also needs to know, just as surely, that the people who disagree with him are wrong.

the Pope. He wants to strengthen the fascistic element in the church.