Sosnowiec Bishop Grzegorz Kaszak’s Pastoral Letter to His Diocese Priests, dated September 22nd, 2023. The Cooperation and Politeness Therein

Abstract

The paper deals with the text of the letter that one of the Polish Christian religious leaders - the Catholic bishop Grzegorz Kaszak – sent to his diocese priests on Sep 22. 2023 (the Catholic church is one of the strongest churches in Poland and Bishop Kaszak was the youngest one among its bishops). In the paper the linguistic theories by H.P. Grice (introduced in his Implicatures) and by G.N. Leech (submitted in his Principles of Pragmatism) are shortly presented and used to check the text of the letter as to the cooperation (i.e. say what you know is as informative as needed, what you know is true, relevant, perspicuous) and politeness (e.g. be tactful, be modest) it shows when it is read according to their linguistic indications. Bishop Kaszak wrote the letter to his diocese priests after a homosexual sex party was organised in the flat of one of the priests in Dąbrowa Górnicza, a city in Bishop Kaszak’s diocese, in August 2023. It was one of many sex scandals in this diocese Bishop Kaszak was ruling since 2009, including the Seminary Rector spending time in a gay dark room. A murder was also committed in Bishop Kaszak’s parish when a mentally ill priest killed a young deacon. In the letter to the diocese priests the topic is not that some people were victims, and, as a matter of fact, this word was never used in the letter. What the author concentrated on was rather how indispensable the priests are and how important their work is.