Newt on his Conversion

On Fox News Sunday.



As a side note I'm perpetually amazed at the nastiness of people on Youtube.

12 Political Catholic Converts

12 Political Converts to Catholicism—Besides Newt
March 30, 2009 06:12 PM ET | Dan Gilgoff | Permanent Link | Print
By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Newt Gingrich's weekend conversion to Roman Catholicism got me thinking about how many Catholic converts from the worlds of politics and political commentary have been in the news in recent years. Here's a quick list I came up with:

Robert Bork
Sam Brownback
Jeb Bush
Laura Ingraham
Bobby Jindal
Lawrence Kudlow
Robert Novak
Ramesh Ponnuru

Notice that they're all conservative? A few of the influential opinion shapers on the right who died recently also were Catholic converts:

Richard John Neuhaus
Tony Snow
Paul Weyrich

The one high-profile Catholic convert on the left who occurred to me is former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

At first blush, this wild political imbalance is none too surprising. Religious converts tend to be more orthodox, which means hewing closely to the church's conservative positions on social issues. But in the case of the Catholic Church, once so solidly identified with the Democratic Party, it's a reminder of just how a tradition's politics can shift.

Anyone I'm leaving off any of these lists?

Link

One of the comments on the article mentions Dick Morris which is a huge surprise to me. I just did a quick google on it and found an article from NY Daily News which says he is "overpassionate" about becoming Catholic. I didn't really know you could become overpassionate about being Catholic. I mentioned it to Dad just now because he called as I was writing this and he said, 'well thats the problem with converts sometimes'. My response was, 'what you talkin' bout?' since he's a convert, but I decided not to get into it with him.

I have two political people I would like to see convert, and I have a slight basis for both. George W. Bush, since Jeb is Catholic, and he was very respectful of Catholics during his time in office. And Rush Limbaugh since a week or two ago he accidently said 'Catholic converter' instead of 'catalytic converter'.

Back to being serious about the list though, it just reminded me again of how much I miss Tony Snow. I always really enjoyed hearing his thoughts on current events and politics.

Newt a Catholic?

I've heard the President Bush conversion rumors before, but this is the first I've heard of Newt Gingrich.

I'm not quite sure how that all works, seeing as how he's on his third wife I believe. But we are a church of sinners as one of the comments on AMP said.

Tony Blair Joins the Catholic Church

Tony Blair joins Catholic Church

Good for him. But its a pity that he did not allow the teachings of the Church to influence his political career more. Many policies he held were directly against Church teaching. But I will leave that to him and his spiritual advisers.

Dr. Francis Beckwith

I read on Meandering Home of the conversion of Dr. Francis Beckwith, President of the Evangelical Theological Society. I post this so anyone who reads this can keep Dr. Beckwith and his family in their prayers, and also the members of the Evangelical Theological Society who must be troubled and shocked by the news.

*Edit: Here is his statement at Right Reason

More Benedict and the Plight of Christian Converts

Well, I'm a bad blogger, or I have bad blogger etiquette. I followed a link from someone's blog to another blog and I'm going to link to that second blog, but I've now forgotten which the first blog was so I can't link to them and their post that originally followed (sorry whoever it was... Mea Culpa)

Unam Sanctam has two really good posts up. One is a wonderful collection of pictures from Benedict's Trip to Turkey. This is one of the best collections I've seen so far. The other is about the plight of Christian converts in Malayasia.