Verbosity
In the 1970 film Tora, Tora, Tora – dramatizing the December 7th, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and events leading up to it – alerts had been received from Washington of something impending but when and where remained unclear. And there is a scene in the office of Admiral Kimmel (played by Martin Balsam) in which Admiral Halsey (played by James Whitmore), who is about to depart with his carrier fleet to supply Wake Island, says, “Kim, level with me. I want a clear directive . . . if I run into a Japanese ship, what action do I take?” And Kimmel, looking wearied by the tension of the moment, replies, “Use your common sense.” To which Halsey says, “That’s the best damn order I ever had.”
Verbosity is defined as wordiness, the excessive, circuitous use of words. Examples abound in academic and political circles. For instance: The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels. In other words: PEOPLE READ. Or it may be said: The medical community indicates that a program of downsizing average total daily caloric intake is maximally efficacious in the field of proactive weight-reduction methodologies. In other words: DOCTORS SAY THAT THE BEST WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT IS TO EAT LESS. Judging from those examples the remedy for verbosity is not just the reduction in the number of words used but the use of down to earth words that people can understand – that get across to people with greater efficiency. The reason I bring this up is the welcome news about the recent exhortation of Pope Francis titled The Joy of Love in which he enlarges and deepens and, yes, evangelizes the scope of Church teaching on marriage and related issues. But it takes 269 pages to do so.
I have a theory about verbosity, elongated presentations on some issue or other. The speaker is trying to say too much or to reconcile apparently clashing points of view and always has to circle back and give it a try again and again – and yet his audience will remain split into those who say he said this and those who say, no, he said that. As I read the reactions on the Internet to the Pope’s exhortation, that’s what’s happening – certain things emphasized by some, other things emphasized by others. That’s the risk you run in guiding our currently polarized community.
I find that I personally get verbose before an audience when I have to field a question that’s beyond my reach. But you’re expected to know the answers and so you keep talking, hoping that the more you say, the audience will conclude you know what you’re talking about – all the while hoping a hook will emerge from the wings to whisk you off stage. A better option came to me when I was once asked whether I agreed with Harvey Cox’s bestseller The Secular City (which I hadn’t read). I said, “Yes and No” which spared the audience and me a long verbal odyssey into no place in particular.
Anyway – as I read the Pope’s exhortation I sensed that in his encouragement of the use of “discernment” and the personal touch between penitent and pastor at the parish level regarding marriage, access to communion and other issues he was encouraging the very approach used by our sainted (but un-canonized) pastor Jack O’Hare throughout his twenty years of tenure at St. Leo’s – which was in accord – though in a different context – with Admiral Kimmel’s command: “Use your common sense.”