Former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich screened his Catholic documentary “Nine Days That Changed the World” Monday night in Washington Hall and urged the audience to carry the film’s lessons into an increasingly secular nation.
“Nine Days That Changed the World,” produced and narrated by the former speaker and his wife, Callista, chronicles Pope John Paul II’s historic first visit to Poland in June 1979 and the subsequent beginnings of the solidarity movement that overthrew the Polish Communists in 1990.
“You cannot understand the history of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War without understanding the power of religion and in particular the influence of Pope John Paul II,” Newt said as he introduced the film.
He said the film and the pope’s messages are still relevant today.
“The message of this film is not just for those places that might have overt dictatorships such as Cuba or China but are also for those places in the West that have aggressively and abundantly used courts and bureaucracies to weaken the religious impulse and the right of individuals to approach God on their own terms,” Newt said.
“Conflict between a secular government determined to impose its power and a free people seeking the right to approach God on their own terms and seeking the right to openly profess their face is a conflict that has gone on for most of human history, and a conflict that goes on in the United States today.”
At the end of the screening, the Gingriches greeted audience members and posed for photos with members of the College Republicans.
“It’s easier to be an atheist in America than a Christian,” Callista — a lifelong Catholic — told The Observer after the screening.
Read the full story at the Notre Dame Observer.
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