The Pope’s little miracle of laughter

Michael Cook

June 18, 2024 3 Reactions

The world is divided up into three types of societies.

There are societies where laughter is encouraged. In the US and elsewhere we can read and share The Onion and the Babylon Bee. (Here’s the Bee’s take on Colbert and the Pope.)

There are societies where laughter is hidden. Where is The Ginseng, the North Korean counterpart to The Onion? I’m sure that North Koreans laugh – but not in public. Confidential sources tell me that Xi Jinping is a karaoke rockstar, but there are currently no plans for a concert in Tiananmen Square. 

And there are societies where nobody laughs. I’m thinking of the New York Times. I get the feeling that its employees have a choice between righteous indignation and po-faced disdain. In fact, wokeness there and everywhere enforces a dour Puritanical grimness. Its police walk their beats ready to cancel anyone who makes an Irish joke, a black joke, a trans joke, a Jewish joke, an Asian joke, a Greta joke. Is there hilarity, belly laughs, and chortling in the corridors of the Gray Lady?

I’m sure that’s one reason why Trump is leading Biden in the polls. Trump’s mockery is mean and unfair. But he can be very funny. And Joe?

As G.K. Chesterton said – an expert on humour if ever there was one – “It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch. For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.”

Laughter is a hallmark of democracy. In a society where everyone is fundamentally equal, we can laugh at each other.

But the Pope made an even more daring assertion – that laughter is fundamentally Christian. To quote GKC again, “Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian”. Can you imagine the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran Ali Khamenei organising a conference of comedians? Probably not. Islam takes itself too seriously.

But as the Pope told the comedians: “According to the Bible, at the beginning of the world, while everything was being created, divine wisdom practiced your form of art for the benefit of none other than God himself, the first spectator of history.”  

What’s your take on Dad jokes? Tell us in the comments.  

Michael Cook is editor of Mercator.

Image credit: Pope Francis meeting Stephen Colbert / Babylon Bee