Msgr Kurzaj And Rhetoric

I gave more thought to my visitor's comment yesterday that Msgr Kurzaj's homily "harms your rhetorical cause for the archbishop’s hegemony over Our Lady of the Atonement". His reference to rhetoric brought me back to when I taught rhetoric at the start of my career (I did it just long enough to be able to know what Samuel Johnson meant when he called teaching "intricate misery").

So I went back and listened to the homily again, all the way through. I thought there was something good about it when I first listened to it, and going back, I'm beginning to see what it is.

In classical rhetoric, there are three kinds of argument: argument from the nature of the thing, argument from similitude, and argument from circumstance. Argument from circumstance is the most desperate. The best examples are from classical histories, where the historian makes up the argument a general must have used in addressing his troops before a battle: "We're boxed in on three sides by the ocean. The enemy faces us on the fourth side. We have no chance if we try to swim for it. We have some chance if we fight our way out. Let's go, men!"

Msgr Kurzaj's homily is quite a good argument from circumstance, recognizing his situation, and that of the parish, is desperate. He's coming in assuming the parish is either divided or united against the archbishop, his boss. The parish is likely to mistrust him. Prospects aren't good. Here are his points:

• I didn't expect to be here. I was in the Holy Land. The archbishop gave me a call. I said I'd come.
• I did it because I'm Catholic. I follow orders. We're all Catholic.
• This is a good place. Nobody has done anything wrong.
• A parish has a bishop. It needs a bishop. Right now it has the one it has.
• Whether it gets the one in Houston or the one in San Antonio is up to Rome.
• We need to renew our commitment to being Christian and Catholic.
• This includes the need to be humble and pray, be optimistic and keep the unity of the Church in mind.

He's also able to make his Polish accent and stumbling phraseology work for him -- he's appealing to basic principles and coming from a perspective of simple common denominators. He doesn't talk down -- in effect, more or less saying I'm from Poland and had to take English courses, he's talking up and respecting his audience.

Reminds me of Robert E. Lee's comment on Grant's strategy: "Altogether, he's managing his situation rather well."