{"id":95,"date":"2009-10-10T10:34:30","date_gmt":"2009-10-10T10:34:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/10\/gingrich-on-catholicism-this-is-the-place-that-i-belong.html"},"modified":"2009-10-10T10:34:30","modified_gmt":"2009-10-10T10:34:30","slug":"gingrich-on-catholicism-this-is-the-place-that-i-belong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/10\/gingrich-on-catholicism-this-is-the-place-that-i-belong.html","title":{"rendered":"Gingrich on Catholicism: “This is the place that I belong”"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I don’t know that I wanted to become a Catholic so much as I became a
\nCatholic. I don’t know that it was volitional in that sense. Having
\ngone to the basilica (The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception<\/a>,
\nin Washington) with my wife, who sings in the choir there, for about a
\ndecade, I think it gradually grew on me. And when Pope Benedict came to
\nthe basilica for vespers with the bishops, and my wife and the choir
\nwere singing, and I was allowed to come as a spouse — I had been
\ntalking with Monsignor Rossi, who is the rector of the basilica, for
\nabout five years, just about faith, and secularism, the challenges we
\nhave in the modern world with our civilization, and that afternoon
\nseeing Pope Benedict XVI fairly close up, and both really believing in
\nhis central theme of ‘Christ Our Hope,’ and seeing the joy in his eyes,
\nfundamentally different than the news media portrait of a severe German
\nintellectual, something in me just was triggered. And I said to
\nMonsignor Rossi that night that I wanted to convert. And we spent the
\nfollowing six or eight months studying with Monsignor Rossi, and it was
\nmore a process of becoming more and more comfortable that this was —
\nthis is — the place that I belong, and the taking of the Eucharist is
\nthe experience that enriches my life.”<\/p>\n

— Newt Gingrich<\/a>, explaining his conversion to the Boston Globe’s Michael Paulson.
  <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I don’t know that I wanted to become a Catholic so much as I became a Catholic. I don’t know that it was volitional in that sense. Having gone to the basilica (The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, in Washington) with my wife, who sings in the choir there, for about…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nGingrich on Catholicism: "This is the place that I belong" - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/10\/gingrich-on-catholicism-this-is-the-place-that-i-belong.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gingrich on Catholicism: "This is the place that I belong" - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"“I don’t know that I wanted to become a Catholic so much as I became a Catholic. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}