Meaghan O'Keefe, assistant professor of religious studies at the University of California, Davis, employs the methods of rhetorical analysis to examine linguistic strategies employed in United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) documents, in particular voting guides, to reinforce episcopal teaching authority, especially “in the wake of the sexual abuse scandals” (3). O'Keefe presents her argument in seven chapters, plus an epilogue. Despite their minimal influence on Catholic voters, the voter guides, produced every four years beginning in 1976, provide O'Keefe with a unique source for comparing rhetorical strategies, before and after clerical sexual abuse scandals. “These strategies loosely coalesce around three goals: to maintain the authority of the clergy over the laity while not arguing for this authority, to anchor prior authoritative discourse in new and different contexts, and finally, to merge a Catholic vision of the state with American patriotism in a manner that minimizes incompatibility and maximizes shared values” (11). O'Keefe convincingly demonstrates these three strategies in the six subsequent chapters.
Each chapter focuses on a particular rhetorical strategy and concludes with helpful explanatory notes as well as a list of works cited. She begins by examining the rhetorical coupling of “conscience” with “formation” in a question-answer format to render conscience in the foreground as a passive receptor of preexisting, timeless formation that bishops communicate. The next chapter specifies “new and different contexts” with particular attention to “quotation patterns” (58). For example, in 2004, twelve Scripture references appeared; in 2016, two. In 2008/2012, seventeen Vatican document citations appeared, in 2016, seventy-six. She next introduces “ideograph” (78), that is, a highly abstract and rhetorically powerful phrase used to elide the following: human rights, the dignity of the human person, the image of God, and the right to life to fashion a thoroughly patriotic argument about “right to life.” The subsequent chapter examines subtle changes in the rhetorical use of “intrinsic evil,” in condemning “racism” and “abortion” to align with Evangelical Christians’ positions. The sixth chapter stands as a point of contrast. O'Keefe presents the “nuns on the bus” as an effective rhetorical strategy with its personal, more “freewheeling” and even humorous mode of communication (150). The concluding chapter returns to the USCCB's repetitive appeal to “well-formed conscience, intrinsic evil, and the dignity of the human person” as “self-evident truths” (160) that forgo direct appeal to episcopal authority. The epilogue reflects briefly on mixed receptions of Pope Francis, the Pennsylvania grand jury report on clerical sexual abuse, and the USCCB letter condemning racism, Open Wide Our Hearts. She ends on a hopeful note that the church's long commitment to the complexities of “reasoned argument” (170) may yet prevail in US public discourse.
O'Keefe's comparative rhetorical analysis brings into focus the linguistic strategies that the US bishops employ to foreground timeless church teaching and obscure episcopal authorship. Using technical rhetorical concepts such as ploche (repetition in structuring an argument), anthypophora (question-answer format), gradatio and sorites (two distinct series configurations), and grammatical structures peculiar to English, the author guides her reader to attend to the effects produced by subtle shifts in discourse. O'Keefe's familiarity with Catholic moral discourse, such as M. Cathleen Kaveny's work on intrinsic evil, greatly enriches her rhetorical analysis. An impressive works cited concludes each chapter. A notable omission is any account of the voter guide's production. Does an USCCB staff member or single bishop produce a draft that a committee edits? Has authorship changed over time? She, in a sense, reinforces the bishops’ rhetorical ploy by failing to specify authorship. Another surprise, given O'Keefe's familiarity with Catholic theological discourse, is her selection of sociologist Anthony Giddens’ definition of tradition as a “closed system” (115). This choice masks the complexities in the rhetorical uses of “tradition” not only by bishops but also by nuns on buses. Such comments are mere quibbles in comparison with the many insights that O'Keefe's timely analysis of the USCCB's voter guides offers her reader. This book is especially recommended to those interested in US bishops’ public discourse, Catholic influence in US electoral politics, as well as those considering wide-ranging impact of clerical sexual abuse scandals on episcopal authority.
