The faith isn’t meant to be boring.With the replacement of David Letterman announced this month, three Catholics – Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon, and Stephen Colbert – have officially taken over late night comedy.
Rolling Stone reported that Jimmy Kimmel, who served as an altar boy as a young kid, is “still religious.” “I don’t understand atheism,” he told the music magazine. “I don’t know how anyone could be sure there isn’t a God.”
Jimmy Fallon – also a former altar boy – may not be practicing, but did confess in an interview that he “wanted to be a priest” when he was younger. “I just, I loved the church,” he confessed. “I loved the idea of it. I loved the smell of the incense. I loved the feeling you get when you left church. I loved like how this priest can make people feel this good. I just thought it was – I loved the whole idea of it.”
And Stephen Colbert – the king of Comedy Central – is maybe the most unabashedly Catholic of all three. This might come as a shock; after all, his sanctimonious pundit character on “The Colbert Report” seems to be a wink-wink disavowal of all things Catholic or even religious. But for this CCD teacher, nothing could be further from the truth. From candid confessions in NPR and The New York Times about his faith, to schooling scholars on Christian theology on his show, to co-chairing an event with the Archbishop of New York at a Catholic university, the man takes his faith very seriously. (Even his appearance on Letterman this week centered around some eye-rolling Christmas-cocktail puns, e.g., “no room at the gin” and “king of the juice.”)
Is this all just a coincidence? What does it mean?
Joe Heschmeyer is convinced that the rise of this trio says more about Protestant America than about Catholicism – namely, that the number of self-identifying Protestants is in rapid decline. But that won’t do; the convergence just seems too remarkable. I mean, why not three “spiritual but not religious” comedians – or at least one? Whatever else it means quantitatively, the rise of three Catholics to the high thrones of comedy is qualitative evidence of the joyful nature of Catholicism, a joy that tends toward humor, even in the throes of – maybe especially in the throes of – great suffering.
As Fr. Barron memorably put it, Christianity is launched on earth with a sacred “jest.” “The essence of comedy is the coming together of opposites, the juxtaposition of incongruous things,” he writes. “So we laugh when an adult speaks like a child or when a simple man finds himself lost amid the complexities of sophisticated society. The central claim of Christianity – still startling after two thousand years – is that God became human. The Creator of the cosmos, who transcends any definition or concept, took to himself a nature like ours, becoming one of us…It has been suggested that the heart of sin is taking oneself too seriously. Perhaps this is why God chose to save us by making us laugh.”
But the comedy doesn’t end with the Incarnation – far from it. GK Chesterton ended his classic book Orthodoxy with a meditation on Jesus’ hidden sense of joy throughout his life:
The death of Jesus may seem to douse the funny flames with the cold waters of tragedy – but just as Christianity is pinned down by all the weight of the world, it slips out from under its thumb with the Resurrection, the glorious and happy conquering of sin and death that billions of Christians commemorate every Easter. Dante, reflecting on the grand drama of the Cosmos from the spark of Creation, through the heart of the Cross, and up to the heights of the Empyrean, rightly re-branded it a “divine comedy.”
No wonder, then, that cultural commentator Fr. James Martin declared joy, humor, and laughter the heart of the spiritual life.
It was on The Colbert Report, coincidentally, that Fr. Martin talked about the Bible’s underappreciated comic imagery, from Abraham falling on his face laughing, to Jesus’ colorful parables and playful nicknames, to Peter trying to walk on water and – like Wile E. Coyote – plummeting after a few steps out.
Simply put, Catholicism is joyful, and has given the world some of its funny people – Rabelais, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Walker Percy, Bob Newhart, John Candy, Chris Farley, Dan Aykroyd, Martin Short, Dane Cook, Conan O’Brien, Brian Regan, Jim Gaffigan, Kevin Smith, Kevin James, and Steve Carrell among them. Hilaire Belloc said it best: “Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, there’s always laughter and good red wine.”
Of course, just because joy is there for the taking doesn’t mean, sadly, that it’s taken. In his exhortation “The Joy of the Gospel,” Pope Francis admits: “There are Christians whose lives seem like Lent without Easter…like someone who has just come back from a funeral!” Instead, we should “appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty, and who invite others to a delicious banquet.” Our dour moods and our lack of joy belie the truth we claim to know.
We shall know the truth, the truth shall make us droll – because the truth is that the whole point of the Church is “that your joy may be complete.” (Jn 15:11)
Matthew Becklois a husband and father-to-be, amateur philosopher, and cultural commentator at Aleteia and Word on Fire. His writing has been featured in First Things, The Dish, and Real Clear Religion.
