Uneasy Celebration: American Justice and Divine Mercy

Amy McLean

Kaleigh Spooner

WRTG 150

October 24, 2014

Uneasy Celebration: American Justice and Divine Mercy

I grew up in America during the war on terror. I was only 6 years old in 2001 when the twin towers were hit and our country suddenly became immersed in a war on terror, and America was changed forever.  I grew up listening to concerns about Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden on the news and around the dinner table. I remember when Saddam Hussein’s regime was overthrown and he was killed, and everyone said that Osama bin Laden was even worse, and that if we could get rid of bin Laden, we would win the war on terror. That was not necessarily true, but that was the public consciousness. When I learned that bin Laden was dead, I saw the news footage of thousands of people on the streets of New York, standing on each other’s shoulders, waving American flags and celebrating bin Laden’s death. I remember thinking that it was a little wrong, because I remember how outraged people were when rumors went around after 9/11 that people in Arab nations were celebrating the attack and death of Americans. The roles were now reversed.  I thought that maybe we weren’t sending the right message to the world by being so excited that someone had died. Because of this, I was hesitant to celebrate the Death of Osama bin Laden, even though I knew that he was an evil man.

Like me, Patrick Clark also has a moral hesitation to celebrating at bin Laden’s death, and he, in his blog post American Justice and Divine Mercy: Thoughts on Osama Bin Laden’s Death, successfully persuades his readers, predominantly Catholics like himself, to feel the same. He does this by using rhetorical questions, comparisons, and strong appeals to authority.

Clark’s essay consists largely of rhetorical questions, starting with the very first sentence, “First, should we consider it anything more than a blind coincidence that this momentous attack was carried out on Divine Mercy Sunday?” drawing his readers attention to the coincidence, and asking them to evaluate its significance . He proceeds to ask his readers many questions throughout the essay, each bringing up new ideas and parallels that Clark’s readers probably haven’t thought about.  So this begs the question: why phrase these new ideas as questions? Why not simply state them as facts or thoughts or beliefs of the author, since he seems to think of them that way? By phrasing these ideas as questions, Clark accomplishes two distinct purposes. First, Clark knows that his ideas may be new to his reader, so by presenting an idea as a question, he implies that the reader has the option to accept or reject it, while at the same time implying that he, the author, whom the reader trusts, has already accepted this idea, which is incentive for the reader to accept it. For example, “is it appropriate for Christians to feel a little uneasy with the outpouring of ‘solidarity’ among the American citizenry in the wake of bin Laden’s death?” Clark uses this question to make his readers believe that Christians should be uncomfortable with the solidarity, because, although a reader could answer “yes, that is entirely appropriate,” the implied answer is “no,” and a reader will feel uncomfortable if they do not agree with that, especially if they have agreed with the implied answers to any of the other questions Clark poses.  Second, questions, especially rhetorical ones, beg to be answered. By asking the reader a question, Clark is asking them to actually think about what he is telling them, rather than accepting or rejecting them at face value. These questions encourage readers to think and come up with their own opinions about America’s reaction to bin Laden’s death.  Posing the question “what are we to make of this jubilation?” requires an answer, and immediately the reader’s brain starts working to provide that. This is one of Clark’s main purposes: to get his readers to think about, and hopefully accept, his conclusions and ideas. Clark also uses these questions as an appeal to logos, because as his readers ask themselves these questions, they realize that that they have opinions that they have not thought deeply about, which are not logical, and thinking about the issue is the logical conclusion. This all plays into the genre of religious rhetoric that Clark is writing in. Religious rhetoric is characterized by moral arguments, which Clark’s clearly is, and often includes rhetorical questions with the intent of encouraging the audience to think more deeply about the message.     

Another rhetorical device Clark uses to convince his readers that the celebration at bin Laden’s death is immoral and unchristian is comparison. Clark draws comparisons between bin Laden’s death and Christ’s death.  “Can we reasonably and in good conscience associate the bullet-hole in bin Laden’s head with the hole in Jesus’ pierced side, from which divine justice and mercy poured out upon the whole human race?”  These parallels that Clark draws are exaggerated, suggesting that by celebrating bin Laden’s death, Americans are either downplaying Christ’s death, or exalting bin Laden to a role of savior, neither of which is the intent of the celebrators, but by making these comparisons, however exaggerated, Clark effectively villainize the celebrators as opponents of Christ. Therefore, Clark implies, any true follower of Christ, who opposes comparing the Lord to a mass murderer, should agree with Clark’s idea that the celebrations at bin Laden’s execution are wrong. This plays to the genre of the piece in that pieces of religious rhetoric normally glorify and honor the deity of the religion, here Christ. Clark surprises his readers by almost seeming to break with the form and characteristics that they were expecting in his essay. This accomplishes the desire of gaining the reader’s attention and sympathy. Attention because it is outside of the form that was expected and sympathy because Clark implies that he is not making the comparisons of Christ to amoral figures, but rather those celebrating are the ones that are profaning Him. Clark’s audience are then more likely to unite with him ideologically because they do not want to be an enemy to Christ, which is how Clark, through these exaggerated comparisons, seems to characterize those celebrating at bin Laden’s death.  The religious audience will also feel rage when they see their deity unceremoniously compared to a mass murderer. Clark plays off of this anger by directing it at those who are celebrating at bin Laden’s death. This shows how these comparisons are overwhelming appeals to pathos, playing off of the moral feeling and gut reactions of the readers when they see something sacred seeming to be held in such irreverence by those who celebrate bin Laden’s death.

Patrick Clark strengthens and backs up his highly moral, and guilt-based, argument with strong appeals to authority, among them the Bible, St. Faustina (who instituted the Catholic holiday of Divine Mercy Sunday, the day that this attack was coincidentally carried out), and Pope John Paul II (who was beautified, meaning made a saint, on the very same day that bin Laden was killed). By choosing these authorities to reference and quote, Clark uses sources that his audience is familiar with, and that are extremely kairotic, since bin Laden was killed on the Divine Mercy Sunday set apart for the beatification of Pope John Paul II. Clark’s audience is already thinking about these people, and already respects them, so by quoting them, he appeals to something comfortable and familiar, and audiences are more likely to accept something that they see as comfortable and familiar, rather than completely new information. Another purpose of Clark’s appeals to authority is that it gives his argument deeper import. If he, a Catholic blogger, says something, there is no real reason to believe it, but if the pope says it, then believing it is essential to eternal salvation. By quoting these authorities, Clark is able to convince his audience that there are important spiritual reasons to believe his ideas. The last purpose of Clark’s appeals to authority is that these people were well respected, and are held up as saints and examples in Catholic culture and doctrine. As such, Catholics trying to become better look to them, their beliefs and their lives as examples and try to emulate them. By quoting them, Clark implies that if Faustina and John Paul II were still around, they would agree with him and support his argument, and encourages his Catholic audience to follow the example of these venerated saints and agree with him as well.

In conclusion, Clark successfully uses rhetorical questions to make his audience think about the moral issues attached to celebrating bin Laden’s death , comparisons to evoke strong emotional responses, and appeals to authority to convince his readers that there should be some sort of moral and religious objection to celebrating bin Laden’s death.