Joe Soucheray: This Catholic Town is Weary of Sordidness. Throw the Bums Out.

The article I have chosen to analyze this week is an opinion piece written by Joe Soucheray, and was published by the St. Paul Pioneer press. I think Soucheray could have been more detail oriented and implored more argumentative devices to create a stronger argument. Soucheray relied too heavily on what he assumes to be shared knowledge within the Pioneer Press' readership. 

His claim is that we, Catholic residents of St. Paul are tired of the immoral acts of priests being covered up by the Church, and we should "throw the bums out." He supports his claim with a lack of factual or hard data. Instead he refers to an incident that occurred with Priest John Shelley. Although names are given of the parties involved, there is little mention of the dates or other details about the incident. This information would be helpful to the casual reader of the Pioneer Press. Soucheray seems to assume that readers of his opinion would have already read the article posted earlier in the day about the priest sexual misconduct task force members who were named today. The assumption is not a far stretch, but me being a casual reader, had to dig to find the article he barely mentions as data. All of his assumptions can be grouped together to be called the qualifiers of the argument - they limit the strength of his argument by relying too heavily on the assumed knowledge of the reader. 

In conclusion, after reading this piece, I think Soucheray needs to spend more time constructing his arguments to make them stronger and to complete the ultimate goal of argumentation - to persuade his audience.

http://www.twincities.com/stpaul/ci_24269241/joe-soucheray-this-catholic-town-is-weary-sordidness?source-hottopics