{"id":299,"date":"2009-03-03T11:11:54","date_gmt":"2009-03-03T11:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/saint-newt-gingrich-to-swim-th.html"},"modified":"2009-03-03T11:11:54","modified_gmt":"2009-03-03T11:11:54","slug":"saint-newt-gingrich-to-swim-th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/saint-newt-gingrich-to-swim-th.html","title":{"rendered":"Saint Newt? Gingrich to swim the Tiber"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s one heckuva parenthetical aside buried in the NYT Magazine’s lengthy profile of Newt Gingrich<\/a>. But here it is, in its entirety:<\/p>\n

\n

(A Baptist since graduate school, Gingrich said he will soon convert to Catholicism, his wife’s faith.) <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n\"Newt<\/strong><\/span>Wow. I’d like to know more–though it seems, according to the American Papist<\/a> last November (guess I was busy with other things), word is Newt will be an Easter convert. It’s interesting of course that we’d have yet another conservative politician and\/or evangelical-style Protestant going Roman. And interesting that these converts are in many respects becoming the face of public Catholicism, of a conservative bent.<\/p>\n

So, Newt, how come? Gingrich has never struck many as the religious type, and he has many unsavory episodes in his life, some of which the graf preceding the conversion remark alludes to:<\/p>\n

\n

At a moment when the role of religious fundamentalism in the party is a central question for reformers, Gingrich, rather than making any kind of case for a new enlightenment, has in fact gone to great lengths to placate Christian conservatives. The family-values crowd has never completely embraced Newt, probably because he has been married three times, most recently to a former Hill staff member, Callista Bisek. In 2006, though, Gingrich wrote a book called “Rediscovering God in America” — part of a new canon of work he has done reaffirming the role of religion in public life. The following year, he went on radio with the evangelical minister James Dobson to apologize for having been unfaithful to his second wife. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hey, there’s no free lunch except grace. But as I said, I’d like to know more about the man vying with Rush Limbaugh (and poor Michael Steele)<\/a> to lead the GOP out of the wilderness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s one heckuva parenthetical aside buried in the NYT Magazine’s lengthy profile of Newt Gingrich. But here it is, in its entirety: (A Baptist since graduate school, Gingrich said he will soon convert to Catholicism, his wife’s faith.) Wow. I’d like to know more–though it seems, according to the American Papist last November (guess I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,7,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nSaint Newt? Gingrich to swim the Tiber - Pontifications<\/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\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/saint-newt-gingrich-to-swim-th.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Saint Newt? Gingrich to swim the Tiber - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It’s one heckuva parenthetical aside buried in the NYT Magazine’s lengthy profile of Newt Gingrich. But here it is, in its entirety: (A Baptist since graduate school, Gingrich said he will soon convert to Catholicism, his wife’s faith.) Wow. 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Gingrich to swim the Tiber - Pontifications","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/saint-newt-gingrich-to-swim-th.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Saint Newt? Gingrich to swim the Tiber - Pontifications","og_description":"It’s one heckuva parenthetical aside buried in the NYT Magazine’s lengthy profile of Newt Gingrich. But here it is, in its entirety: (A Baptist since graduate school, Gingrich said he will soon convert to Catholicism, his wife’s faith.) Wow. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}