25 May 2016
Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor for
National Review, the venerable magazine of conservative politics founded by William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955.
Ponnuru grew up in Kansas City and graduated summa cum laude from Princeton’s history department. He has published articles in numerous newspapers including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Newsday, and the New York Post. He has also written for First Things, Policy Review, The Weekly Standard, The New Republic, Reason, and other publications.
He is a regular guest on television programs, including CNN’s "Inside Politics," NBC’s "The McLaughlin Group," MSNBC’s "Buchanan & Press" and "Donahue," CNBC’s "Kudlow & Cramer," PBS’s "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," CSPAN’s "Washington Journal," Comedy Central’s "Politically Incorrect," Fox News, and NPR’s "Morning Edition."
Ponnuru lives in Washington D.C. with his wife April, a policy adviser to the Majority Whip in the U.S. House of Representatives.
IgnatiusInsight.com spoke with Ponnuru about his recent conversion to Catholicism, the current state of politics in the United States, and the upcoming presidential election.
IgnatiusInsight.com: You recently entered the Catholic Church. What was your religious background and what led you to become Catholic? Were you surprised by anything as you journeyed toward becoming Catholic?
Ponnuru: My father is Hindu, my mother Lutheran. I was raised without much religious instruction, except that of example. The process by which the Church drew me to her was long. It would be presumptuous for me to say that I myself entirely understood how the Holy Spirit worked here. To summarize the intellectual aspect of the process: I first came to see that many of the virtues the Church inculcates were good for people, and then to see that they were good for people because this was the way we were meant to live--and so forth until I saw that I now believed the Church’s claims for itself to be true.
