Catholic Rhetorics

Diana George, Mariolina Salvatori, Julie Bokser, and Bill Fitzgerald gave a presentation on rhetoric in the Catholic tradition, a topic I know absolutely nothing about, but that turned out to be absolutely fascinating, especially the work with holy cards on which Diana and Mariolina are collaborating.

Diana and Mariolina focus in particular on the holy cards, or immaginette, that feature the Madonna and child. Diana’s work deals with the visual aspects of the representations of the Madonna and child on the recto side of the cards, while Mariolina’s work engages with language and the use of prayer as made available on the verso side of the cards. Both suggest that holy cards teach Catholics to imagine aspects of faith that cannot be reached through the physical, and ask: what cultural work do these “extraordinary” objects perform? What are the relationships between the images and the prayers on the cards? What pedagogical functions do these cards perform?

Diana used the overhead projector to show many, many examples of the gorgeous representations of Madonna and child shown on the holy cards, and proposed that holy cards distribute the image of Mary as the powerful, compassionate, protective, and approachable intercessor. While some cards use high art reprentations of Mary as the Queen of Heaven, many more represent her as human, of the world and of the people. For the Catholic church, she is the virgin of forbearance, but for the people — as represented in the imagery of the cards — she is the loving mother who saw her son executed, and to whom he will listen. The pictures on the cards insist on Mary’s humanity, and so her approachability to convey the supplicant’s prayers to her son, as opposed to the church’s insistence on her transcendence.

The title of Mariolina’s presentation, “Ora Pro Nobis: The Lessons of Prayer in Italian Popular Culture”, played upon the dual meanings of the Latin ora, which can mean either “pray” or “speak”, so the phrase of her title can be read as either “Pray for us” or “Speak for us,” pointing to the nature of Mary as human intercessor. Mariolina’s interest was in the compositional structure of the relation between text and image on the cards, and the pedagogical function of that structure. The immaginette are small and inexpensive and accessible to the poor, and are sometimes called “the Bible of the illiterate”, meant to be kept in a pocket or pinned to one’s clothing, to be touched and held or kissed in a moment of prayer, to be circulated and passed on from one person to another, often down through generations. They have a picture and a title (Madonna di Capuzzo, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Madonna di Pompeii, et cetera) on the front, and a prayer on the the back, often connected to the image, that invites, guides, and teaches the supplicant to address the divine. But the invocation and image also materially anchor the Madonna to a specific place of worship (in both the title — Capuzzo, Guadalupe, Pompeii — and in the setting of the image), offering the supplicant an earthly connection.

In this way, when the words of the prayer are connected to its background, it gives the prayer a literal meaning and importance that transcend its metaphorical language and meanings. The literal meaning is localized and connected to the material body of the supplicant. The prayers of the cards produce a connection between heaven and earth; as material encounters with the divine, they foster an intelligibility of the divine in profound and complex ways.

Julie Bokser’s presentation on “The Persuasion of Esther: A Nun’s Model of Silent, Seductive, Violent Rhetoric” used a feminist rhetorical methodology to demonstrate how the story of Esther provides a useful model of the rhetoric of silence. Esther uses silence, and other methods, to stop Haman’s slaughter of the Jews, and Bokser suggested that her dubious methods of persuasion — beauty, deferral, witholding, and, again, silence — demonstrate how a non-dominant rhetoric might carry persuasive force.

Finally, Bill Fitzgerald’s presentation, “What Rhetorical Theory Needs is a Theory of Prayer”, asked us to consider prayer in rhetorical terms, and rhetoric in terms of prayer. In what ways does prayer constitute Quintilian’s borrowing from Cato the Elder of the vir bonus dicendi peritus, the good man speaking well? Prayer is a request to be heard: its first moment asks, “Listen,” and its second moment addresses an audience, saying, “You.” Its final moment offers a quality of reverence, saying, “Please,” or “Thank you.” So the structure of the prayer: “Listen, you, please.” Prayer is more than a wish, because it addresses, and so possesses a speaker, an audience, and a text or performance: in this, prayer is a rhetorical situation. And this rhetorical situation becomes more complex when we consider that in its (perhaps) symbolic address to some (perhaps) figurative audience, the rhetor may also address a worldly audience, perhaps others, perhaps herself. (I qualify Fitzgerald’s statement here because he seemed to be speaking from a perspective more analytical than devout: while I’ve certainly been in the presence of publically offered prayers that addressed the people present as well as the divine, I think that prayer, when offered in faith, is less sybmolic or figurative than Fitzgerald seems to believe.) Fitzgerald invokes Kenneth Burke’s rhetorical functions of identification and division in concluding that prayer is an expression of our ability to stand in relation to a being supremely Other to ourselves.

There were some intriguing points raised in the Q & A session. Mariolina pointed out that, while the sources of the images on the prayer cards are clear, she’s found it impossible in her research to discover who writes the prayers: seems like it would be an interesting bit of scholarly detective work, and probably one not easily accomplished on the Web. (If you’ve got any ideas, please let me know, and I’ll pass them along to Mariolina.) Mariolina also pointed out that Italian Catholics rarely, if ever, address God: they address the Virgin or the saints, who are the only ones who can talk to God, and the cards provide a material scene for the prayer.

Finally, it was pointed out that holy cards are intrinsically linked to the printing press, and so carry a technological component. Of course, this made me immediately wonder if there might be an online equivalent of holy cards — and I don’t think there is, or can be. The materiality of holy cards — their size, portability, circulability, and tangibility — are what allow them to offer a material encounter with the divine, in ways that the immateriality of the Web can never achieve.