Political Cartoon Analysis: Catholic Church Sex Scandal
This paper analyzes a political cartoon by Signe Wilkinson published in the Washington Post in August 2018. The cartoon employs a religiously inspired triptych design to critique the Catholic Church's failure to protect vulnerable parishioners from clergy sexual abuse. The analysis examines Wilkinson's use of color, ironic language, and symbolic imagery — including stained glass windows and clerical robes — to communicate a pointed message about institutional complicity. Drawing on scholarly sources, the paper also contextualizes the church's supervisory failures and argues that the cartoon serves as a compelling wake-up call for both church leadership and laypeople.
- Introduction: Overview of cartoon, paper's analytical aims
- Review and Analysis of the Cartoon: Triptych design and church accountability context
- Use of Color and Symbolic Imagery: Panel colors, robes, and stained glass symbolism
- Ironic Language and the Caption: Caption irony and verbal-visual interplay
- Conclusion: Synthesis of artistic and social significance
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper anchors its analysis in a specific, named primary source — a dated editorial cartoon — giving the argument concrete grounding and clear focus.
- It integrates scholarly citations (Mazzoni on triptych tradition; Wasserman on supervisory priest accountability) to contextualize both the artistic choice and the social issue, elevating the analysis beyond simple description.
- The identification of irony as the cartoon's central rhetorical device is well-supported: the caption "The stains on the stained glass windows" is unpacked in relation to the visual elements, demonstrating how verbal and visual language reinforce each other.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates multimodal analysis — the systematic reading of both visual and verbal elements as a unified rhetorical act. Rather than treating the image and caption separately, the author shows how color choices, religious iconography, structural form (the triptych), and the written caption all work together to produce a single ironic argument. This is a foundational skill in visual rhetoric and media criticism.
Structure breakdown
The paper follows a clear three-part structure: an introduction that states the cartoon's subject and the paper's analytical goals; a body section that moves through the cartoon's design, color palette, and language; and a brief conclusion that synthesizes the artistic and social significance of the work. At roughly 400 words, it is a concise close-reading exercise appropriate for an introductory undergraduate communications or media studies course.
Introduction
In the political cartoon depicted in Figure 1 below, Signe Wilkinson, editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post, uses a religiously inspired triptych design to depict a sexual abuse victim, the predatory clergy member perpetrating the offense, and the willful blindness of church leadership — presented in sequential panels — to emphasize the ongoing controversy rocking the Catholic Church. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the techniques used, the points made, and the lessons that can be drawn from this cartoon. A discussion of the use of colors and their meaning, as well as the ironic language employed, is followed by a summary of the analysis in the conclusion.
Fig. 1. Political Cartoon by Signe Wilkinson, August 20, 2018
Review and Analysis of the Cartoon
Wilkinson uses a triptych — a work of art divided into three sections — that has long been employed by the Catholic Church to portray biblical scenes of significance (Mazzoni 74) to communicate the message that the church has too often failed to protect its most vulnerable parishioners from the sexual predation of its clergy. Few Americans want to see the terms "sex scandal" and "church" used together, yet headlines have been replete with such accounts for many years, and the church appears unwilling or unable to adequately address the problem.
Indeed, the problem is pervasive throughout the Catholic Church, but it has been exacerbated by the active intervention of the church's own leadership. In this regard, Wasserman emphasizes that a 2002 report found that "supervisory priests — church officials who supervise lower-ranking priests — concealed reports of sexual abuse by lower-ranking priests and created substantial risks of sexual abuse to children" (1149). This institutional complicity is precisely what Wilkinson's cartoon sets out to expose.
Works Cited
Mazzoni, Cristina. "A Roman Triptych of Holy Women." Magistra, vol. 22, no. 1, Summer 2016, pp. 73–77.
Wasserman, Benjamin D. "Searching for Adequate Accountability: Supervisory Priests and the Church's Child Sex Abuse Crisis." Duke Law Journal, vol. 66, no. 5, pp. 1149–1153.
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