“Blessed are those who have a sense of humour.” For many years, I never associated humour with religion. Religion meant devils, hell, death, punishment, despair and sadness. The passion and death of Christ overshadowed his resurrection. I was sure I was one of the ‘massa damnata’ that St Augustine speaks of, referring to the vast majority of the human race that eventually end up in hell.

So, I will be forever grateful to Prof. John Berry who, two weeks ago, invited me to talk at the launch of his book Love Alone about the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. This Swiss theologian argues that God is all-embracing love and asks, without answering: “Dare we hope that all men will be saved?”

Love, laughter, music and literature are very important for von Balthasar (1905-1988). Berry loves him because he “brought theology to life. It was no longer strictly philosophical or conceptual but simultaneously personal, deep and meaningful.”

Von Balthasar described his years of study as “a grim struggle with the dreariness of theology”. He was deeply influenced by the mystic and doctor devoted to her poor patients Adrienne von Speyr, a woman with a good sense of humour, lively mind and a sharp tongue.

In his essay ‘The humour of the saints’, von Balthasar says: “But the saints are never the kind of killjoy spinster aunts who go in for fault-finding and lack all sense of humour… For humour is a mysterious but unmistakable charism inseparable from Catholic faith, and neither the ‘progressives’ nor the ‘integralists’ seem to possess it – the latter even less than the former…. Both of these tend to be faultfinders, malicious satirists, grumblers, carping critics, full of bitter scorn, know-it-alls who think they have the monopoly on infallible judgement; they are self-legitimising prophets – in short, fanatics. (The word comes from fanum, ‘holy place’, i.e., it denotes guardians of the temple threshold, transported into frenzy by the Divinity.)”

In How to cure a fanatic, Amos Oz also recommends that we laugh at ourselves and are careful not to contract fanaticism as we try to defeat it or combat it.    

In his Razing the Bastions: On the Church in this Age (1952), von Balthasar urged the Catholic Church to move forward with the world. He described it as a series of bastions erected for the sake of complete isolation from the real world. Von Balthasar exhorted the Church to engage “the modern world – not as a stranger or adversary – but rather to encounter it from within – assimilating whatever may be valid within its new system.”

In the 1960s, as the Church fiercely resisted and imposed sanctions on the Labour Party for pushing Malta towards the modern world of national sovereignty, Church-state separation and human rights, we used to sing triumphantly that the enemies will fail to raze the bastions of the Church.

The laughter of the wise

His prophetic call to the Church to leave the comfort zone of the “Catholic ghetto” was taken up by Vatican Council II’s ‘aggiornamento’ (updating) called by St Pope John XXIII to drag the Church into the 20th century. Von Balthasar was excluded from participating physically in it but his spiritual influence was ubiquitous.

In the last 40 years, he has been brought in from the cold. St Pope John Paul II even named him as a cardinal. Von Balthasar, perhaps to show his sense of humour, died two days before being installed.There are still Catholic conservatives who warn that Catholics must be protected from von Balthasar “the same way that children need to be protected from poison”.

Atomic Scientists have warned us that the Doomsday Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight – the closest to nuclear global catastrophe it has ever been- Evarist Bartolo

Pope Francis must have such people in mind when he says: “It is so sad to see consecrated men and women who have no sense of humour, who take everything seriously.” He reminds self-important people of the Church for whom gloominess and holiness are synonymous that “Jesus didn’t rise from the dead so we could cry”. For them “What becomes important is ideology and not the reality of the people and that is not the gospel”.

The laughter that von Balthasar advocates is not “the laughter of the fools” (Ecclesiastes) but the laughter of the wise, of those who also weep and suffer like Viktor Frankl, for whom a successful life means “one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself”.

In Man’s search for meaning, Frankl describes how he and other prisoners survived Auschwitz’s hell through their sense of humour maintaining “their dignity, sanity and zest for life”.

The humour von Balthasar wants us to embrace is not that of the audience who laugh at Soren Kierkegaard’s clown: “A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.”

The Atomic Scientists have warned us that the Doomsday Clock now stands at 90 seconds to midnight – the closest to nuclear global catastrophe it has ever been.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has warned us that the world is “sleepwalking” into a wider war beyond Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while, at the same time, it faces “a confluence of challenges (including climate catastrophe) unlike any other in our lifetimes… Politicians and decision-makers are hobbled by what I call a preference for the present. There is a bias in political and business life for the short term. This near-term thinking is not only deeply irresponsible – it is immoral”.

Last February, Pope Francis tried to rouse us from our indifference and realise that “the whole world is at war  and in self-destruction”.

These clowns warn us that the world is on fire. We laugh at them if we notice them at all.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.