Last week’s blog – The secular goose and the Episcopal gander – created quite a stir. It even made it to the top ten of most commented. I was a bit surprised though, as I never suspected that so many people are so devoid of a sense of humour.

To try and pull the leg of those who describe Archbishop Cremona as a prisoner of the Curia I painted a scene where the evil monsinjuri konservattivi tortured him till he accepted to deliver the Victory Day homily. To make it seem more realistic and at the same time less believable I mentioned people by name. All of them are my friends, some of them very close ones. They all took it in their stride, enjoyed reading the piece which made them laugh.

Unfortunately some other people found the piece offensive and in bad taste. They sent SMSs and emails and phoned the priests mentioned in the piece to express their solidarity. Why do I hate them so much, they asked my friends in sheer horror not to write terror? They counselled them to seek legal advice and institute libel action.

Fortunately there was no one except Victoria Grech who tendered the advice that I be tied up in chains and hauled in front of the Inquisition. No one suggested – as far as I could gather – that harsh canonical censures be imposed on me. Neither did I receive letters exhorting me to dress in sack cloth, cover myself in ashes and beat my breast while loudly proclaiming my sins and crying my eyes out in repentance.

Secularism in the heart of the Church

All these shenanigans have a greatly worrying aspect. I do not refer to the lack of sense of humour that some have. There is something worse. The ladies and gentlemen who were so easily offended have shown, albeit unknowingly, how much the spirit of secularism has infiltrated our Catholic culture and mentality. Had this not been the case they would have asked for ecclesiastical sanctions. But even these defenders of religion have become so secularised that they asked for a civil remedy i.e. a libel case and not a canonical one.

It is a pity that so many people take themselves too seriously. Like the superior of the convent in the film In the Name of the Rose they tend to think that laughing or smiling is a sin or at least should be considered as one. Perhaps they organise a petition to try and add it to the list of new sins that the media “discover” from time to time.

A fellow Seminarian – way back in the 1970s – used to say that “jekk tidhaq tmut u jekk ma tidhaqx tmur xorta wahda, allura ahjar tidhaq.” Good advice, indeed, I think. But see where this mentality landed him. He left the Seminary and eventually became a protestant pastor. (This is true. Cross my heart and hope to die.)

Perhaps laughing and smiling should be considered as an enemy of the Church after all. But what would we do with good Pope John Paul I and his beautiful smile? “They” already took care of him as even he, it is rumoured, was killed by the evil monsinjuri konservattivi.

Serious about people’s humour

A sense of humour is not just a laughing matter. They say it is good for relationships, betters your health, pacifies troublesome circumstances etc. So much so that it is the subject of many a study.

– aLast year Hugo Carretero Dios, researcher in the Department of Social Psychology and Methodology of Behavioural Science at the University of Granada presented his doctoral thesis called Sentido del Humor: Construcción de la Escala de Apreciación del Humor (Sense of humour: building of the appreciation of humour scale). Carretero Dios analysed more than 1,500 people between the ages of 18 and 80. An equal number of men and women formed the sample. The earth shaking conclusion of the study was that there are no universally good or bad jokes for both women and men and points out that women have changed their humorous preferences.

But did we need a doctoral thesis to know that not everyone laughs in the same way at the same jokes? Or that some people find something funny while others would not consider the same thing in like manner? But let me comment no futher lest I be accused that I am poking fun on academia.

Carretero Dios observed a generational change in the women’s preferences to the different types of humour. “There has been a change in women’s values and roles in our society. In people over 45-50, we observed that both men and women laughed more at jokes degrading to women than those degrading to men”. At the same time, both men and women showed more rejection to jokes degrading to men.

The report on the study I lifted from the Internet (http://prensa.ugr.es/prensa/research/verNota/prensa.php?nota=454) says that among the participants between 18-25 years old, the trend was different and men and women had different reactions. Men laugh more at jokes degrading to women and reject those degrading to men. By contrast, women laugh more at jokes degrading to men and reject those degrading to women.

To show that humour is a serious thing let all ignoramuses know that there is such a thing as the International Society of Humour Studies which, among other things, organises the International Humour Conference during which no one can stop them laughing. There is also an International Journal of Humor Research. This is rumoured to be the most important scientific journal in the world on the study of sense of humour.

Those who World like to beef their humour can contact Prof. Hugo Carretero Dios. Department of Social Psychology and Methodology of Behavioural Science of the University of Granada on email: hugocd@ugr.es»>hugocd@ugr.es Web: http://www.titiritas.org

They can seek counsel on how to laugh to their heart’s content ….. seriously.

PS. I hope that people post comments in a light vein as well. There are too many who post comments as if they are writing the most important thing since the Magna Carta.
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