Newt Gingrich a Catholic

The Internet is a wondrous tool for so many reasons, but I relived one of them today for perhaps the thousandth time. I am talking about accidental discoveries, which happen to me routinely, but are one of the WWW characteristics that I've come to take for granted.

So anyhow...I get a daily e-mail notification from TIME magazine called "The Page" from reporter Mark Halperin, detailing several news stories. I clicked on a link that was about Newt Gingrich, but appeared to be some opinion piece...and in the process, found out that Newt Gingrich has become the Roman Catholic Church's most recent high-profile convert. Rod Dreher quotes Christopher Buckly in this blog post about what kind of catechism student Gingrich must have been. One can only imagine...but it is fun to do so!

There is also cogitation about whether or not Newt's conversion is genuine and heartfelt or a politically calculated decision. Who can tell? I choose to believe the former and here is why: I am a fan of Newt Gingrich's ideas (for the most part, 95% of the time), but have never felt that he has been more than religious on a token basis until very recent years.

I read Steve Gillon's book The Pact a couple of months ago, which seemed to substantiate what I've just stated. (It is a great read, by the way, all about the rivalry and both mutual respect and distaste that Gingrich and Clinton shared for each others' political skills and beliefs, respectively). Gingrich grew up in the Deep South, in Georgia, where Baptist church identification and attendance was ubiquitous. This is both a blessing and a curse, a benefit in the sense that familiarity with the doctrines of Christianity on some level tends to occur in a broad percentage of people, but a problem from the perspective that said familiarity seldom rises above a surface knowledge. It seems to me that Gingrich, following his fall from power in 1998 and subsequent dissolution of his marriage, which stemmed from an affair with his current wife, has done some real soul-searching. He has authored a recent book(let) and filmed a documentary on "Rediscovering God in America", both unread and unseen by me, so I can't comment any further on them. He has also gone on Dr. Dobson's program and admitted that he hadn't always been the family man he should have been, etc., etc. None of this proves anything in and of itself, of course, and only God knows hearts. I suppose your viewpoint on all of this will directly correlate to how you felt about Gingrich all along, and how you tend to feel about humanity in general, particularly politicians.

I have noticed a renewed interest in the last few years in the ancient traditions and disciplines of Christianity. It is easy to me to see how someone on a spiritual quest could arrive where Newt has, given the current environment. It will be interesting to see if much more is made of this in the days ahead.