Newt Gingrich Makes a Move

by Tim Drake in News on Thursday, March 11, 2010 6:00 AM

(Faith & Family likes to focus on what celebrities get right. The prominent people we highlight in our My Faith & Family features may not have always been Catholic role models, but they acknowledge the debt they owe to their families and to the Catholic faith.)

The pivotal moment in the Catholic conversion of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich may have occurred during Pope Benedict XVI’s 2008 Apostolic Visit to the U.S., but the seeds of faith were planted long before, during Gingrich’s childhood.

Born and raised in the Harrisburg, Pa., area, Gingrich was the only boy, and eldest of five children. His mother had divorced and remarried a military man.

Gingrich’s mother and grandmother influenced him spiritually.

“My maternal grandmother was a devout Missouri Synod Lutheran and believed in good and evil,” said Gingrich. “She taught me my most basic lessons about God and Satan.”

Gingrich’s mother loved to sing in the choir, and some of his favorite memories are of Handel’s “Messiah,” Christmas carols, and candlelight services.

There was the “sense that God loved you,” said Gingrich. “I grew up in a time when you prayed every night. As a very young child, I said my nightly prayers. It was the sort of world I grew up in; God was a fact of life.”

Gingrich has always embraced the idea that we need a savior.

“I’ve always thought of myself as a person who believed deeply in God and the power of prayer, and that you had to be saved through faith because you were inadequate yourself.”

In many ways, Gingrich’s denomination has depended upon those he’s been surrounded by. As an Army brat, moving from Pennsylvania to Kansas to France, Germany, and finally Fort Benning, Ga., the family tended to follow the faith of whatever their military chaplain happened to be. As a youth, Gingrich says that he was a Presbyterian acolyte. While in graduate school at Tulane University, Gingrich was impressed with the eloquent preaching he found at St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church, so he became Southern Baptist, which he would remain until his conversion to Catholicism in 2009.

Following Historical Evidence

A student of history — he received a Ph.D. in Modern European History from Tulane in 1971 — Gingrich felt compelled to move toward the Catholic Church from the historical evidence.

“When you have 2,000 years of intellectual depth surrounding you, it’s comforting,” he told Time magazine.

“You can’t engage in understanding Europe and America without trying to understand the Bible, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, the Reformation and counter-reformation,” said Gingrich. “From that standpoint, you inexorably have to engage the Church and you come to realize that it’s this 2,000-year-old structure.”

“I’ve lived in Germany, France, and Belgium,” said Gingrich. “Part of my being is medieval in that I resonate with large cathedrals and the pageantry of the Church at its fullest. It didn’t occur to me for the longest time that that might have personal ramifications.”

His Faithful Spouse

In 2000, Gingrich married his wife Callista, a life-long Catholic, and she played a significant role in his eventual conversion. As the couple traveled, Gingrich found himself attending Mass with Callista. He also began attending the noon Mass on Sundays at the National Shrine of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception to hear his wife sing in the professional choir.

“I got into the habit of trying to be a good husband, and would attend the noon Mass to hear her sing,” said Gingrich. “It made the week go better.”

“She had a deep need to be at Mass every week and singing at the Basilica. That’s part of her service.”

But Callista never asked him to convert.

“She would occasionally say to me that ‘the Church is available,’ recalled Gingrich. “That’s as hard as she would push. She didn’t try to twist my arm.”

The Universal Pastor

While history and the faith of his wife were enough to interest him in Catholicism, his relationships with Catholic clergy and the example of the Holy Father himself would eventually lead Gingrich into the Church.

During his years attending Mass at the National Shrine, Gingrich came to know the rector Monsignor Walter Rossi and his predecessor, Monsignor Michael Bransfield.

“Year by year, I was drawn in by the work of the rectors,” said Gingrich. “Five years ago, we went to Europe with the choir. Monsignor Rossi and I got into conversations about the crisis of our civilization. The more I began to think about how we are parallel to Paul’s world, the more I thought about the Church.

While a junior member of Congress, Gingrich had met Pope John Paul. It would take Pope Benedict XVI’s U.S. visit to push Gingrich over the edge. Gingrich watched the Pope’s visit with keen interest. On the evening of April 16, 2008 — the Pope’s 81st birthday — Gingrich was in attendance in the upper church during vespers and at the Pope’s address to the U.S. Bishops downstairs in the Basilica’s crypt.

“I thought his choice of ‘Christ Our Hope’ was exactly right,” said Gingrich. “He expressed in his eyes such joy that night.”

“That evening, I told Monsignor Rossi, ‘I want you to know that I’m going to convert,’” said Gingrich. “My experience today convinces me that my natural home is in the Church.”

From there, Gingrich began studying with Monsignor Rossi and reading books. He was influenced by George Weigel’s The Final Revolution.

“All of that fit both my personal sense of reality that there is a dual world — the spiritual world that transcends and is larger than the physical world — and also my personal sense of finding a place where I could rest.”

One Step at a Time

Having been thrice married, one of the larger hurdles for Gingrich was going through the annulment process. Still, even there, Gingrich was impressed with the Church.

“Through that, I experienced the Church judicial structure and how it worked,” he said.

Another hurdle was the Eucharist.

“The biggest part was to fully accept transubstantiation and realize that when the priest says, ‘the Body of Christ,’ that you’re participating in the re-presenting of the Last Supper.”

On March 29, 2009, at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Washington, D.C., Gingrich was received into the Church.

“One great emotional moment for me at the Basilica was just before Easter when they receive everyone who is going to join the Church,” said Gingrich. “There were 4,000 people at Mass. I went and stood next to Monsignor Rossi and Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl and saw this sea of humanity, of which I was a tiny part. It was a powerful integrating moment.”

What remains foremost in Gingrich’s mind from the day of his reception is “the sense of joy and receptivity.”

One Body of Christ

Gingrich added that there have also been some surprises.

“A real surprise to me was the degree to which the Church is a community,” he said. “I’ve been surprised by the number of people who have walked up to me and said, ‘Welcome home.’ To realize that I’m part of a body of a billion people has been the biggest surprise.”

Over the summer of 2009, Gingrich traveled to China, and was impressed by the Church’s presence there.

“Even when the Mass is in Chinese, you still feel you’re part of the universal Church,” said Gingrich. “Participating in the Eucharist and being enriched by the Body of Christ is remarkable.”

He adds that the Church provides “a refuge and community of faith and a sense of fellowship” that he didn’t have prior to his conversion.

“Today, I’m the most relaxed as a person than I have ever been in my life,” said Gingrich. “When you feel that you’re surrounded by people who genuinely care about you, it allows you to operate in a completely different tone. I feel very fortunate.”

A Modern “Paul”

Gingrich follows the footsteps of several other high-profile political converts, including columnist Robert Novak, Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, and CNBC host Larry Kudlow.

Like Paul, he now finds himself engaged in reminding a pagan world that there is a God.

“Our country is in a great struggle, and it’s something that Paul wrote about frequently,” said Gingrich. “Paul wrote about a world where there was paganism. That’s where we are. A number of people with great social prestige think that paganism is a reasonable way of life. They like to think that they’re unique, but they’re not.”

“In the end, I don’t believe America as we’ve known it can be understood or survive without realizing that our fundamental rights come from our Creator,” he added. “You cannot explain this country if you erase God from the picture.”

In addition to his work as the founder of the non-partisan think tank American Solutions, Gingrich and his wife have produced documentaries, including Rediscovering God in America II: Our Heritage, and their newest, Nine Days that Changed the World, which examines the role that President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II played in bringing down the Berlin Wall and ending European Communism.

Gingrich said that he became deeply convicted when the 9th Circuit Court said that it was unconstitutional for the school district to lead students in a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

“Faced with the choice between a pagan world and a Christian one, I had zero doubt about what kind of world I wanted my grandchildren to grow up in.”

— Staff writer Tim Drake writes from St. Joseph, Minn. This article was published, in part, in the Spring 2010 issue of Faith & Family Magazine.

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