Robert Novak - Religious Views

Religious Views

Raised in secular Jewish culture, Novak lived seven decades as an agnostic. He briefly attended Unitarian and then Methodist services at the behest of his first and second wives, but he was not interested in either faith. He particularly disliked the Methodists' anti-Vietnam War position. Novak was introduced to Catholicism in the early 1980s when his friend Jeffrey Bell, a Republican political consultant and former Reagan aide, gave him some books on the Catholic faith. At that time, Novak had nearly died from spinal meningitis.

Novak's wife, Geraldine, began regular churchgoing in the early 1990s and eventually settled on St Patrick's Catholic Church, Washington D.C. One day she persuaded Novak, who had not attended religious services for nearly 30 years, to join her at Mass. The celebrant was Fr. Peter Vaghi, whom he had known before Vaghi switched from politics to the priesthood. Novak then started to go to Mass regularly and decided to convert a few years later. According to Novak, the turning point came when he visited Syracuse University to lecture. Before he spoke, he was seated at a dinner table near a female student who wore a cross necklace. Novak asked her if she was Catholic and she asked him the same. Novak said he had been going to Mass each Sunday for the last four years, but had not converted. "Mr Novak," the young woman replied, "life is short, but eternity is forever." That brief sentence chilled Novak, who felt the student had channeled the Holy Spirit. When he got home and told Geraldine, they decided it was time to convert. In May 1998 Novak was received into the Roman Catholic Church at the age of 67. Geraldine was already a Catholic. Al Hunt, Judy Woodruff, Fred Barnes, Margaret Carlson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Henry Hyde, and Rick Santorum attended Novak's baptism, with some of them openly crying.

The New York Post's widely read Page Six gossip column claimed that he was converted to Catholicism by Father C. John McCloskey III, a leader of Opus Dei, "the secretive sect which drew so much attention with The Da Vinci Code." Actually, McCloskey was one of the two priests — the other was Vaghi — from whom Novak received instruction in the Catholic faith. Andrew Sullivan claimed that Novak was a member of Opus Dei. John L. Allen, Jr., however, in his authoritative study, Opus Dei, wrote that Novak was not a member. Novak felt that his new faith did not influence his personal behavior or his political views, saying, "I'm a Christian now, but I still have some bad traits."