| Newt Promotes Documentary on John Paul II |
 The AnchorOctober 16, 2009 Christine M. Williams BOSTON, Mass. — When secular intellectual elites expunge religion from history, the solution is to get into the movie business, asserted former speaker of the U.S. House Newt Gingrich. At least that was his reaction. At a fund-raising event for Catholic Citizenship, the Catholic grassroots education organization in Massachusetts, Gingrich promoted his new documentary about the visit of Pope John Paul II to Poland in 1979. The film, “Nine Days That Changed the World,” is scheduled to come out this fall. Many cite the papal pilgrimage as pivotal to the downfall of communism. Sixteen months after Pope John Paul’s nine-day visit to Poland, the solidarity movement became the first officially recognized free trade union in the communist bloc, with more than 10 million members, the film’s Website asserts. Gingrich described the scene where Pope John Paul stood in a square in Warsaw and said, “Let the face of God touch this earth.” The crowd broke into 14 minutes of cheering and chanted, “We want God.” At that decisive moment moral authority was transferred from the soviet system to the people of Poland. A Dominican priest interviewed for the film said of the event, “You could feel the state shrinking,” he said. Footage obtained by the bishops of Poland — who hired their own camera crews because they did not trust the government-run media to accurately capture the event — shows a crowd of young people lifting a 14-foot cross. “This is in a communist dictatorship which has spent a generation preaching atheism,” said Gingrich. Gingrich went on to say that the challenge faced in Poland is faced in nations all over the world, including the United States. “The parallels between the cross being put up in Warsaw as a sign of liberty and what the courts in this country have done to the cross are eerie and, I think, frightening,” he said, calling the limiting of religious expression by courts in the is country “anti-American.” “Essentially they are saying, ‘You can be religious in private, in secret, as long as you don’t tell anybody.’ That’s not freedom,” he said. The Catholic Citizenship event was held at the Union Club of Boston, and the room overlooked Boston Common, the site of the Mass celebrated by Pope John Paul Oct. 1, 1979. In the event’s introduction Ray Flynn, former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican and founder of Catholic Citizenship, said there was a special relationship to the former pontiff and Boston. Flynn spoke about the fact that the pope chose Boston as the first city to visit in the United States. One million people gathered on the Common for the Mass, and people who remember the day often speak of the heavy rain. Flynn said that while ambassador, the pope used to remind him of the rain all the time. Flynn introduced Gingrich, calling him a friend, great political leader and fellow follower of Jesus Christ. Gingrich recently converted to Catholicism, the faith of his wife, Callista. In his comments, Gingrich talked about his spiritual journey. As a young man he sang in a Lutheran boy’s choir. He was raised in a career military family and had military chaplains from different Christian backgrounds throughout his life before becoming Baptist in his late 20s. After marrying Callista, he began attending Mass for 10 years. His conversion to Catholicism was sparked by last year’s papal visit of Pope Benedict XVI. He said of Pope Benedict, “I found him to be utterly different than the all the news media’s original projections. This was not the pope is a rottweiler. This was not an aloof, austere German intellectual. This was a man who was totally in love with what he was doing.” Gingrich said he was driven by a desire to understand and experience the Eucharist and that his conversion has been “extraordinarily meaningful and positive.” Gingrich also told The Anchor that if not for his conversion, he still would have produced “Nine Days That Changed the World” because as a historian he was fascinated with that “extraordinary moment in human history.” The documentary is the fifth film he and his wife have produced, and they recently told Michael Moore that he launched their career in movies. “I think he was a little surprised,” Gingrich said, adding that he told the documentary filmmaker, “You convinced us that movies in this day and age are a powerful and practical vehicle for communicating and educating people.” After his prepared remarks at the Catholic Citizenship event, some of the 120 people in attendance asked Gingrich what they could do about the secularization of the nation. He advised them to first speak out about the facts. Tell people that the Declaration of Independence, our founding political document, states the people gain their rights from the creator. Say to those who cite Thomas Jefferson as justification to prevent prayer at school football games that the former president regularly loaned the treasury building for religious services. Encourage young people to read Abraham Lincoln’s speeches, in particular the Second Inaugural Address where in 703 words he referenced God 14 times and quoted the Bible twice, he said. Gingrich also challenged the crowd to encourage local school boards to teach history accurately. “There has been in the modern west such a deep effort to secularize education,” he said. “Our historic memory is always one generation deep, and if we fail to teach it, then we can’t expect people to have any notion of who they are and where they come from.” The modern secular world, which starts in academia and grows from there into the courts and news media, does not want to hear the truth. Instead, they prefer to teach “a fantasy version of history that fits their ideological values.” It is the call of Christians to witness to the truth, he said. “The secularists are so totally out of touch with reality and so fundamentally dishonest that the more we have the courage to stand up in public, they cannot survive,” Gingrich said. For more information visit the documentary’s Website: http://ninedaysthatchangedtheworld.com/media.php. |