Pope Francis Organized His Protection of Minors Speech to Divert Attention from the Catholic Church's Failings

Pope Francis concluded the Vatican’s Summit on the Protection of Minors, which discussed child sex abuse in the Catholic Church. His carefully-drafted concluding speech accepted the Church’s responsibility for past cases of abuse, but was organized in a futile attempt to divert attention from the Church’s actions. His words accepted responsibility, but he also tried to spread the blame around. This was a classic case of using speech organization for persuasive purposes. He said the right things, but didn’t sound as if he meant them. Let’s look at how his devious speech tactic operated.

Pope Francis

Many Catholic priests and bishops have been implicated in and often convicted of criminal child sexual abuse, while the Catholic Church engaged in a massive, world-wide, decades-long program to conceal child abuse while protecting predators in its midst. George Cardinal Pell, one of the Pope’s top advisors and a leading advocate of priestly celibacy, is now in jail for raping a boy. This summit was decades overdue.

Speech Organization Can Help a Speaker Persuade People

Speech organization can have persuasive effects all in its own. Ancient Roman speech teachers talked about the canon of dispositio. In English, this is often called “arrangement” or “organization.” Dispositio, however, means more than organizing a speech for clarity. Just as a general disposes troops for battle in the way that leads to victory, a speaker disposes his or her speech materials to persuade the audience. This leads to questions like, should the most powerful point be placed first or last in the speech? Does the speaker present the claims first, or the evidence first? Do fear appeals go in the beginning of the speech or the end? In the 20^th Century, American speech professor Alan Monroe devised the Motivated Sequence, which uses psychological principles to organize a speech. Social psychologists talk about the primacy and recency effects. People notice and remember the first and last things and often don’t remember the middle. That is why public speaking students are taught to state their most important points clearly and sharply in the speech’s introduction and conclusion.

The Pope’s Organization Distracted Attention from the Real Issues

The Pope’s speech used organization to create a distraction or diversion. He did not organize his speech to persuade: he organized his speech to spread the blame. The Pope put his sense of responsibility in the middle of his speech where fewer people would notice, while the introduction and conclusion talked about non-Church child abuse.

The speech’s opening took a general attitude “Our work has made us realize once again that the gravity of the scourge of the sexual abuse of minors is, and historically has been, a widespread phenomenon in all cultures and societies.” Francis did not begin by accepting the Church’s responsibility but by pointing out the child abuse occurs worldwide. He then pointed out that other religions have abused children: “I am reminded too of the cruel religious practice, once widespread in certain cultures, of sacrificing human beings – frequently children – in pagan rites.” Well, sure, Marduk worshipers killed children. Does that excuse priests who merely rape children and don’t kill them? Francis also noted that “many cases of the sexual abuse of minors go unreported, particularly the great number committed within families.” Fine, but those aren’t Church issues per se.

Indeed, the Pope doubled down on blaming other people for child abuse: “The first truth that emerges from the data at hand is that those who perpetrate abuse, that is acts of physical, sexual or emotional violence, are primarily parents, relatives, husbands of child brides, coaches and teachers. Furthermore, according to the UNICEF data of 2017 regarding 28 countries throughout the world, 9 out of every 10 girls who have had forced sexual relations reveal that they were victims of someone they knew or who was close to their family.” He then complained about sexual tourism, child abuse in Italian families, and Internet pornography.

All of that is, of course, awful and it is true. But this was a summit about child abuse within the Catholic Church. The summit’s purpose was not to not solve the problem of child abuse world-wide. That would be a wonderful thing do, but it was not the point at issue. The point at issue is that the Catholic Church’s announced purpose is entirely to spread good things around the world, and yet for many years the Catholic Church employed and sheltered a great many vicious criminals. It did so not to reform those criminals, but to protect them. That was the issue that the world wanted to hear the Pope tackle. But he did not talk about that issue first.

Instead, the Pope talked about the real issues later. Even then, in the speech’s middle, he accepted responsibility reluctantly: “this evil is in no way less monstrous when it takes place within the Church.” Odd. For a church should be the safest place, under the doctrine of sanctuary. Not only is abuse in the Catholic Church equally monstrous, the Pope should have said that it is worse because of the moral duplicity. The Pope eventually acknowledged this: “Consecrated persons, chosen by God to guide souls to salvation, let themselves be dominated by their human frailty or sickness and thus become tools of Satan.” (Even then, I very much doubt that God himself called Cardinal Pell to guide anyone. Predators often seek positions where they can find easy victims.)

Francis called for the Catholic Church to face the issue with “humility” and “courage.” He listed some vague prescriptions for Church reform. He then went backwards in his conclusion: “I make a heartfelt appeal for an all-out battle against the abuse of minors both sexually and in other areas, on the part of all authorities and individuals, for we are dealing with abominable crimes that must be erased from the face of the earth: this is demanded by all the many victims hidden in families and in the various settings of our societies.” His conclusion talked about “all authorities and individuals,” but did not mention the Church. Why not?

By primacy and recency effects, we remember the beginning and end of a speech better than the middle. By putting the speech’s main points in the middle, the Pope arranged this speech to deflect attention from the Church’s problems. Very cunning.

What Went Wrong in This Speech?

Yes, Francis was right that the Catholic Church’s evils are part of society’s evils. Yes, the Catholic Church should try to solve all of society’s evils. But the Church must start with its own self-cleansing, and this is something the Pope slid around while never landing. The only people he fooled were the people who wanted to be fooled.

This blog has commented favorably on several of Pope Francis’ other speeches. But until he addresses child abuse in the church firmly and forthrightly, without excuses, with no prevarication, he will lose credibility when he talks about world peace, hunger, immigration, or any other issue.  The time came and went, and Francis did not say what he needed to say.

P.S.: Technical point for rhetoric scholars: in a much-cited scholarly essay, Lloyd Bitzer wrote about the “rhetorical situation,” which arises from an “exigence.” Francis tried to rise to the rhetorical situation but didn’t quite hit the exigence. 

US Government photo