Gingrich did not attend the typical group instruction through Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, which “is the better process for a host of reasons” including the built-in support of a faith community, Rossi said. But Gingrich “went through an adapted RCIA” program and “is not the only one” who has converted to Catholicism that way at the National Shrine, which is not a parish church and so has no regular program for those interested in joining.
Some years ago, Gingrich started coming to hear Callista sing in the choir, and at choir functions, and began frequently engaging Rossi in theological conversations. Of course, many intellectuals have come to faith the way they do everything else, thinking their way in the door. “Because the speaker has a great mind,” Rossi said, he was particularly drawn to Saint Bonaventure, whose work sought to integrate faith and reason. He also gravitated to Thomas Aquinas, who gave us the (not very capitalistic) theory of just price, not to mention the construct of venial and mortal sin, and Saint Augustine, whose just war theory is still as relevant to Catholics as the Constitution is to Americans.
Like all converts, Gingrich learned about the Mass, the sacraments and the doctrine. But the reading list Rossi gave Gingrich was not an easy lift; one text was “Introduction to Christianity,” written by Pope Benedict when as Cardinal Ratzinger he was John Paul’s theologian. Often, Gingrich and Rossi reviewed documents written by John Paul.
“We also brought in people to meet with him,’’ Rossi said, though he declined to elaborate.
Gingrich recently told The Washington Post that in one sense, it was the music made by his wife’s choir that had drawn him into the church — and if that is the case, that isn’t so unusual, either. In the sociologist and novelist Andrew Greeley’s 1990 book “The Catholic Myth: The Behaviors and Beliefs of American Catholics,” Greeley writes that a great many Catholics stay in the church in part for the poetry and the music of Catholicism, both real and metaphorical.
Prayer also played a role, and at some point over the course of his instruction, Gingrich began to pray the rosary: “Between his wife and I, we taught him,” Rossi said.
In an April essay in the National Catholic Register, “Why I Became a Catholic,” Gingrich says yet another influence was George Weigel’s work, especially “The Cube and the Cathedral,” about the scourge of European secularism. But over a three-hour dinner at Taverna Giulia near the Vatican several years ago, Weigel says Newt and Callista Gingrich spoke with him almost exclusively about the subject of another of Weigel’s books, John Paul II. “He was genuinely moved by John Paul and his ability to ignite a ‘revolution of conscience,’ ” in his native Poland, which became the theme of his film.
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