Word: catholicization
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This past spring, however, after several decades as a nominal Southern Baptist, Gingrich converted to Catholicism. With the fervor of a convert, he has embraced the role of defending both his new faith and religious liberty. In his 2006 book Rediscovering God in America, Gingrich lambasted what he calls the "secular effort to reject any sense of a spiritual life as mattering." And days before he officially joined the Catholic Communion on March 29, he was among the first to criticize the University of Notre Dame for inviting Barack Obama to speak, Twittering (of course...
...first half of 2009, the former Speaker raked in $8.1 million through his political committee, far outpacing his party rivals.) While he wouldn't be the first to experience a conversion on the road to Des Moines, there are simpler ways of understanding the new godly Gingrich. American Catholicism has been losing members at a remarkable rate; an April 2009 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life report found that for every person who joins the Catholic Church, four others leave. But a steady stream of high-profile political conservatives have bucked this trend by converting in the past decade...
Gingrich describes the appeal of Catholicism for him in just these terms. "When you have 2,000 years of intellectual depth surrounding you," he told me on a recent summer morning, "it's comforting." There's also cachet in conservative political circles to being Catholic. Until their deaths in the past year, Father Richard John Neuhaus and National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. presided over an intellectual haven for conservatives put off by Evangelicals who rail against experts and élites...
...Catholicism offers Gingrich not just a strong religious tradition and community. It also gives him peace at home. His wife Callista is a lifelong Catholic who sings in the basilica's professional choir. After the two married in 2000, Gingrich found himself dragged to church whenever they traveled - "she's adamant that we go to Mass" - and started attending services at the basilica to hear Callista sing...
Gingrich prepared for his conversion with Monsignor Walter Rossi, the basilica's rector. Because the institution is not a parish church, Gingrich's baptism took place at St. Joseph's on Capitol Hill, where Robert Kennedy attended morning Mass when he served in the Senate. Washington Archbishop Donald Wuerl performed...