Humor and Religion

It has been a general guideline of mine, for years, now, not to trust anyone without a sense of humor. Humor is a good and worthwhile thing, and I will have no truck with anyone who insists on doing without it. (Perhaps there are some people who never acquired a proper sense of humor; if so, these are wretches to be pitied. What I am chiefly concerned with, here, is the sort of person who has a sense of humor and seeks to stifle it.) The particular misconception of the humorless is that lightheartedness somehow contradicts the effort to take things seriously, that humor is somehow the opposite of earnestness.

I am sorry to say that there are a great many religious people who feel (and act) this way. Many of them are convinced that religion is A Very Serious Thing Indeed, and that any attempt to acknowledge the inherent humor of certain things (dropped thuribles, outlandish lectors, ridiculous vestments) would be to detract from the dignity and reverence and decorum due to the Mass.

(An aside: it's always about the dignity and reverence and decorum of the Mass, in some Roman Catholic circles. What is dignity and reverence and decorum, anyway? Is it a Mass where nobody smiles, or acknowledges the presence of others? Is proper reverence so easily confused with catatonic rigidity? Mind you, I shudder as much as the next person at the thought of those horror stories of post-Vatican II liturgies — beach balls at Mass, rainbow vestments — but one can acknowledge the human dimension of the liturgy without resorting to such excesses. In any case, it might be worth pointing out that regrettably varicolored vestments are not the sole province of hippies and Franciscans.)

But where was I? Oh, yes, humor. Would you believe, like St. John Chrysostom — or Jorge the monk in Eco's The Name of the Rose — that Christ never laughed? I certainly hope not; there's enough to be construed as humor in the Gospels to suggest that he did. (Roman Catholics may take particular satisfaction in that the Church was founded on a pun.)

In any case, if you would associate with religious types at all, I would suggest the sort with a sense of humor: most Anglicans, for example. Avoid the dire sort of fundamentalists (of both Protestant and Papist persuasions). As for me, I shall be having a Life of Brian viewing party next Sunday.

Miscellaneous Links:
A Joking Matter: And Jesus Laughed
On the Second Book of Aristotle's Poetics (his lost treatise on Comedy)
Umberto Eco web-site