Newt Gingrich Explains His Conversion To Catholic Faith

By Daniel Burke
Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS) Tilting toward a run at the presidency, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich traced his spiritual journey from Southern Baptist to Roman Catholic at a Catholic prayer breakfast here on Wednesday (April 27).

"People ask me when I decided to become Catholic," said Gingrich, who formally converted in 2009. "It would be more accurate to say that I gradually became Catholic and then realized that I should accept the faith that surrounded me."

The twice-divorced former Georgia congressman has labored to assure conservative Christians of his fidelity to traditional values. Just 11 percent of white evangelicals, and 16 percent of white Catholics, favor Gingrich as the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, according to a March Pew Research Center poll.

Gingrich also explained his religious conversion on Tuesday to National Catholic Register, a publication owned by EWTN, a multimedia Catholic network.

"The depth of faith and history contained in the life of the Catholic Church were increasingly apparent to me," Gingrich said Wednesday. "Slowly, over a decade, the centrality of the Eucharist in the Catholic Mass became more and more obvious to me."

Gingrich also noted the spiritual influence of his wife, Callista, a lifelong Catholic, theologian George Weigel and Pope Benedict XVI.

The seventh annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, which is organized and largely attended by conservative Catholics, was billed this year as a celebration of Pope John Paul II's beatification on Sunday. About 900 people attended, according to breakfast founder Joseph Cella.

Each of the breakfast speakers, including Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell, Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., and anti-abortion activist Lila Rose, extolled the late pontiff, but none more so than Gingrich.

Gingrich and his wife recently produced a documentary on John Paul's 1979 trip to his native Poland, then under the grip of Soviet Communism. The pope's visit sowed spiritual seeds that pushed communists from power a decade later, Gingrich said Wednesday.

It was another papal visit, Benedict's 2008 trip to the U.S., that finally drew Gingrich into the church. Callista Gingrich, a longtime chorister at Washington's Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, sang for Benedict at the basilica. Afterwards, Gingrich met the pope.

"For me, the joyful and radiating presence of the Holy Father was a moment of confirmation about the many things I have been thinking and experiencing over the last several years," Gingrich said.

That evening, Gingrich said, he told the basilica's rector that he wanted to convert to Catholicism.

Comments

[Banter]

11:04 PM on 06/19/2011

"The twice-divorced former Georgia congressman has labored to assure conservative Christians of his fidelity to traditional values."

Let's just let that one hang in the air for a while, shall we?

[Valerie Valentine]

03:41 PM on 06/09/2011

It is a known fact that Gingrich tricked his wife when she was just out of surgery(still doped up) to sign papers for a divorce and also so he would get everything and her and his daughters nothing, and also so he will not have to pay child support for his 2 daughters and you want this kind of person to run America. A person that does not believe he should pay child support for his own children. All this talk about turning Catholic I do not believe he is a person that is only out for himself.

http://lonestarbear.blogspot.com/2008/09/newt-gingrich-who-left-1st-wife.html

[Hysterian68]

07:50 AM on 06/01/2011

In a very real sense Gingrich has never really left the Southern Baptist Church. They, like the Catholic Church in the United States, are basically extensions of the Repubican National Committee and now, more and more, filled with Tea Partiers.

Baptists, however, continue to grow as the Catholics have lost over 22,000,000 members (mostly affluent, professional, and educated) since the early 1990s. A statistic which makes the two faiths more and more inseparable in many ways.

[New Yorker]

01:30 PM on 06/08/2011

The Catholic Church predates the Republican Party by about 1900 years so it being an extension of something that didn't exist for most its life, simply defies logica nd reality. The Baptists are a protestant sect that separated from the Catholic Church during the protestant heretical movement. Most of waht you believe as a Baptists came from the Catholic Dogma, only a small misguided part was the protestant part. Satan always seeks to divide the church of Christ this way, sad that some Christians still follow him.

[Rich914]

05:17 PM on 05/21/2011

As a Catholic, I figured we were having a hard enough time, reputation-wise. Now this?

[Tabasco]

07:01 PM on 05/16/2011

Hypocrite? Nah. Now he's a Catholic.

I'm glad he cleared that up.

[Ignatz Mouse]

02:58 PM on 05/11/2011

"Slowly, over a decade, the centrality of the Eucharist in the Catholic Mass became more and more obvious to me." Newt buddy, a piece of bread is just a piece of bread, no matter what magic words of mumbo jumbo anyone says over it. At least in the real world, that is, which you've apparently decided to leave in favor of a medieval cloud-cuckoo-land.

[Luv2Purple]

10:06 AM on 05/08/2011

he became a man of faith and god after committing all those SINS - like CHEATING on his first wife while she WASIN THE HOSPITAL w/ CANCER! and CHEATING AGAIN on his second wife while she had an illness as well, this time w/ a STAFFER. and wasn't NEWTIE the ONLY speaker in US HISTORY to be CONVICTED, FINED & OUSTED? YESSSSS...what a man!

[ajwriter]

07:43 PM on 05/08/2011

Actually, if he truly is a Christian, he should believe in redemption. However, Christ saved his greatest condemnation for hypocrites -- let's see, exactly what was Newt doing when he was attacking Clinton the loudest for his personal failures?...

[Clevelandinwi]

09:13 PM on 05/07/2011

What is he now - Hindu?

[Bill J4321]

04:07 PM on 05/06/2011

Newt likes his religion to match that of his current wife.

Whichever wife he's on these days, that is.

[loggerboots]

03:24 AM on 05/05/2011

Like who cares....really?

[MarkInIrvine]

08:51 PM on 05/03/2011

Newt converted because he liked the poonanny. Nothing more.

[mspink]

08:26 PM on 05/03/2011

It's called playing up to the Christie votes.

[kathy333]

08:13 PM on 05/03/2011

Opportunist! I hardly think this man represents my faith one bit!

[capt hastings]

05:44 PM on 05/03/2011

A Catholic Iowa church just cancelled Newt and Callista speaking before a screening of their film about Pope John Paul. Concerns about politics, not religion, being highlighted by the media and security concerns were the reasons given for the cancellation.
Has Gingrich had his prior two marriages annulled? Has he confessed his sinS of adultery? Has Callista? Maybe Iowa Catholics do things differently, but practicing Catholics in the Midwest know when we're being played for the (political) benefit of someone who has consisistently put the will of his own desires before the will of the Lord.

[marqsbill]

03:23 PM on 05/04/2011

This sounds like your not in favor of any protestants becoming catholic. He could not have been converted catholic ; unless the 2 lady's that he was married to before ,had been contacted by the church, and the church endorsing the conversion .You as a practicing Catholic should have known this. You said he was doing it for political reasons. I guess thats the same reasons you made your comments.

[slydawg]

04:50 PM on 05/03/2011

Newt was my Congressman for years. He attended the largest church in the district, which happened to be Southern Baptist.

He served our district so poorly that, before he became Speaker of the U.S. House, he was almost voted out of office in an overwhelmingly Republican district. It was said he rode around in taxpayer funded limo and bounced checks on the House Bank. Maybe true-maybe not. He later moved from our district to one he thought even more Republican. His forte was self-promotion.

I hope his religious conversion is sincere.

[marqsbill]

03:25 PM on 05/04/2011

And you also believe in the tooth favor