The long-time political commentator and journalist Robert Novak has died at 78 year of age from a malignant tumor.
Mr. Novak was brought up as a Jew, lived for years as an agnostic, but he made a conversion with his wife to Catholicism late in life, in 1998, a conversion he called "his most important change of heart".
Requiescat.
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
Loading ...
A Daily Prayer for Priests
Nota bene: I do not answer these numbers or this Skype address. You won't get me "live". I check for messages regularly.
WDTPRS
020 8133 4535
651-447-6265
on More (bad) news about the Philadelphia Carmel: “It doesn’t work like that. They have a park enclosure. They can’t just leave and they can’t just let people…”
on Episcopal cathedral in Albuqerque to insult the Church by hosting a fake ordination of a Jesuit-trained “wymyn”. Wherein Fr. Z makes a proposal.: “GrantM: No problem, just replace that tune with “Ordain a Lady.” You’re welcome! Let’s dip into the lyrics: “I need…” on Episcopal cathedral in Albuqerque to insult the Church by hosting a fake ordination of a Jesuit-trained “wymyn”. Wherein Fr. Z makes a proposal.: ““They taught me to pray,” she said. [Pray to….?]” Good one, Fr. Z idelsan: I took a brief look at…”
on More (bad) news about the Philadelphia Carmel: “This is what happens when we have people in the Vatican who think the movie “Sister Act” was a documentary.”
on Episcopal cathedral in Albuqerque to insult the Church by hosting a fake ordination of a Jesuit-trained “wymyn”. Wherein Fr. Z makes a proposal.: “Years ago I heard a homily on the Real Presence by a good priest. This priest mentioned that when he…”
on Episcopal cathedral in Albuqerque to insult the Church by hosting a fake ordination of a Jesuit-trained “wymyn”. Wherein Fr. Z makes a proposal.: “Her “diaconal ordination” was an especially shabby affair even for the women’s ordination crowd. It took place in the breakfast…” on The Horan of Babylon on “Why Catholics should use preferred gender pronouns and names”: “Horan of Babylon is a problem, so are most Jesuits, German clergy and much of the 2+2=5 hierarchy such as…”
on More (bad) news about the Philadelphia Carmel: “I was discerning a vocation to Carmel a number of years ago. I want to clarify something about the St.…” on More (bad) news about the Philadelphia Carmel: “2) When they actually come to do the Visititation: let them see what they want to see, hear what they…”
on The Horan of Babylon on “Why Catholics should use preferred gender pronouns and names”: “This is the more-than-once time the name of Merton has popped up in a conversation with a bunch of lunatics.…”
on More (bad) news about the Philadelphia Carmel: “Pius XII wanted monasteries to be federated or associated. Most did follow the document Sponsa Christi, which, until VDq was…”
on More (bad) news about the Philadelphia Carmel: “Very good points about ownership. One thing to look at is if there is a mortgage on the properties. In…”
on Episcopal cathedral in Albuqerque to insult the Church by hosting a fake ordination of a Jesuit-trained “wymyn”. Wherein Fr. Z makes a proposal.: “I visited her website (it’s an altar to herself) and even listened to one of her homillies, last sunday’s: it…” on Episcopal cathedral in Albuqerque to insult the Church by hosting a fake ordination of a Jesuit-trained “wymyn”. Wherein Fr. Z makes a proposal.: “I visited her website (it’s an altar to herself) and even listened to one of her homillies, last sunday’s: it…”
on More (bad) news about the Philadelphia Carmel: “Something that’s unclear is who actually owns the monastery, the Carmelites or the Archdiocese? Usually it’s the order that owns…”
PLEASE subscribe via PayPal if it is useful.
That way I have steady income I can plan on, and you wind up regularly on my list of benefactors for whom I pray and for whom I periodically say Holy Mass.
In view of the rapidly changing challenges I now face, I would like to add more $10/month subscribers. Will you please help?
For a one time donation...
My "challenge coin" for my 25th anniversary of ordination in 2016.
Want one? I do exchanges with military and LEOs, etc.
Loading ...If you travel internationally, this is a super useful gizmo for your mobile internet data. I use one. If you get one through my link, I get data rewards.
Loading ...
They find you a pro-life agent in your area who commits to giving a portion of the fee to a pro-life group!
Help Monks in Wyoming (coffee – UPDATED LINK) and Norcia (beer) and the wonderful "Soap Sisters" of Summit, NJ!
Please follow me on Twitter!
Visits tracked by Statcounter
since Sat., 25 Nov. 2006:
May he rest in peace. I’m surprised to learn that he was born Jewish. I’m glad God kept him around long enough to enable him to discover the truth and beauty of the Catholic Church.
May his memory be eternal, may he rest in peace…
His conversion story is an interesting one, especially the final push he received. I’m sure you could google it if interested.
May he rest in peace.
A tough, honest journalist and commentator – they are so rare. Requiescat in pace.
Now he’s Probebly quizing Caleb and Joshua on the finer arts of spying :)
Requiescat
Mr. Novak was also a lover of the TLM. Apparently he wasn’t offended by the prayers praying for the conversion of the Jews like the left-wing loons. He was a brilliant and insightful journalist. Unfortunately, we will not see the likes of Mr. Novak again. Tom
I found this about his conversion, from http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=24964:
Novak was born Jewish and attended Christian services sporadically until the mid-1960s, after which he stopped going to religious services for nearly 30 years. But Novak said the Holy Spirit began to intervene in his life.
A friend gave Novak Catholic literature after he came close to dying from spinal meningitis in the early 1980s. About a decade later, the columnist’s wife, Geraldine, also not a Catholic, persuaded him to join her at Mass at St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Washington. The celebrant was a former source of Novak’s.
Father Peter Vaghi, now Msgr. Vaghi and pastor of the Church of the Little Flower in Bethesda, Md., was a former Republican lawyer and adviser to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. He had been a source for the Evans and Novak column that Novak wrote with Rowland Evans.
Novak started to go to Mass regularly, but it wasn’t until a few years later that he decided to convert to Catholicism. The turning point, as he recounts in his book, happened when he went to Syracuse University in New York to give a lecture. Before he spoke, he was seated at a dinner table near a young woman who was wearing a necklace with a cross. Novak asked her if she was Catholic, and she posed the same question to him.
Novak replied that he had been going to Mass each Sunday for the last four years, but that he had not converted.
Her response – “Mr. Novak, life is short, but eternity is forever” – motivated him to start the process of becoming a Catholic through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults. He was baptized at St. Patrick’s Church in 1998. His wife was also baptized a Catholic.
Novak said he believed the Holy Spirit led him to Catholicism. He told an audience at the Heritage Foundation in Washington Aug. 2 that when he was interviewed by The New York Times about his book the interviewer scoffed at his story about his source turned priest.
But Novak said he told her he believed the Holy Spirit was behind the coincidences.
“I consider this the only one true faith, so I believe the Holy Spirit led me to it,” Novak said. “Then the next day Pope Benedict (XVI) said the same thing.”
Novak, referring to a Vatican document released in July reaffirming that the Catholic Church is the one true church, quipped that he must have been right.