Steven Mailloux's 2021 Essay "Political Theologies of Sacred Rhetoric," and Walter J. Ong's Thought

Abstract

In my 4,000-word review essay "Steven Mailloux's 2021 Essay 'Political Theologies of Sacred Rhetoric,' and Walter J. Ong's Thought," I highlight certain points in Mailloux's perceptive essay in the new 290-page 2021 anthology Responding to the Sacred: An Inquiry into the Limits of Rhetoric, edited by Michael Bernard-Donals and Kyle Jensen (Penn State University Press, pages 77-98). For example, Mailloux discusses Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope, and the Spanish Renaissance mystic St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Jesuit order, and the author of the short book of instructions known as the Spiritual Exercises. In connection with highlights from Mailloux's fine essay, I discuss the thought of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and rhetorician Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955).