Prices keep going up. Neighbors are picked up off the streets and sent to detention camps. War ravages the Middle East.
There may not be much to laugh about—but Catholics have a long tradition of meeting hardship with comedy as well as with prayer and works of mercy. And humor can be a powerful tool for resistance.
Comic John Fugelsang’s book Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster) highlights the connection between comedy and religion, as it skewers some popular interpretations of the scriptures. Few can claim a stronger Catholic background than Fugelsang, the son of a former Daughter of Wisdom nun and a Franciscan brother.
“I’m here because two people broke a promise to God,” he writes, noting that he turned to stand-up comedy because “I could never afford the therapy I so deeply required.”
His parents made sure the family went to Mass, but they practiced more than pious devotion. “I was taught relentlessly that Christianity was about the things Jesus prioritized. Service to others. Forgiveness. Caring for the poor, the sick, the stranger, the prisoner,” he writes.
Comics like Fugelsang aren’t just funny. They prod believers into taking the gospels seriously. They proclaim, in the spirit of Matthew’s Gospel, about the dangers of humorless, dour, pained expressions of faith, reminding us that Catholic values can be found in unexpected places.
For example, in 2025 the often-raunchy Comedy Central television cartoon South Park last year dramatized Catholic teaching on the dignity of immigrants. It went something like this: An anti-ICE protestor argues that heaven is likely filled with immigrants. The view pans to a cartoon heaven, where there is dancing and celebration in migrant paradise. But not for long. In comes ICE, abducting the migrants from heaven, bringing them back to earth in government-issued SUVs.
The episode is a barbed critique of harsh-anti-immigration policies, and as such aligns surprisingly with the church’s long-standing teachings on human dignity, as well as with Pope Leo XIV and Pope Francis’ insistence on immigrant rights. It is an unlikely parable on the preferential option for the vulnerable.
The go-to view in American culture is to mostly honor religious faith but to treat it as a private matter, with the doctrinal details left unexamined. Not so for the world of comedy. South Park creators have dared to explore the details of Scientology and Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) along with Catholic social teaching.
The comedy cartoon world often addresses long-standing theological disputes. For example: The Catholic response to Jansenism—the medieval heresy which condemned any pleasure in life as sinful—got some perhaps unintended examination on The Simpsons in 2010.
In the Simpsons episode, young Bart is considering becoming Catholic (he thinks it’s pretty cool that Mass includes wine). He partakes in a fantasy Catholic heaven where there is joy, complete with mariachi bands and Irish dancing—contrasted to a dour Christianity, a Calvinist-hued Protestant heaven with the only evident excitement a quiet croquet tournament. The Simpsons make the point that Catholicism, with its embrace of multiple ethnicities and sacramental view of the physical world, can be a celebratory and joyous religion.
These days, my television viewing is largely limited to news and sports. The avalanche of prestige programs available on streaming services has largely priced me out. But I will always listen to a comedian. Particularly those baring their souls, often with courage in pursuit of laughs.
I am a firm believer that faith can’t be bottled up exclusively by those who attend Sunday Mass. Faith can be found anywhere, including on the comedy circuit, if one listens attentively. Even non-Catholic comics sometimes make statements that are rooted in a faith tradition. When comedian Chris Rock gathered the courage to address his divorce in his act, the tone was confessional, never absolving himself or providing rationalizations. Our politicians could learn something. So could many of our Christian leaders.
In 2024, Pope Francis invited comedians to the Vatican, welcoming them as prophets of mirth and laughter. Addressing them during a Vatican audience, including American headliners such as Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Conan O’Brien, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock, and Jim Gaffigan, Francis praised them for “cultivating the gift of making people laugh” and for exercising the power “to spread peace and smiles.”
Francis quoted St. Thomas More, who prayed for the gift of a sense of humor.
Comedians, Francis said, are prophetic voices. “You denounce abuses of power, you give voice to forgotten situations, you highlight abuses.” He might as well have referred to an iron law of comedy: Don’t kick down. What remains funny is skewering the powerful.
Francis could be known for some cutting humor himself. When a bishop approached him with the proud observation that the pope had made him one of his first appointments, the pontiff noted that everyone makes mistakes.
Of the modern popes, John XXIII may win the prize for comic insights. Asked how many worked at the Vatican, he responded with a stark observation: “about half.” Once a cardinal approached the pope with a complaint that a lay worker in the Vatican had received a pay increase on a par with his own. “That man has 10 children. I hope the cardinal doesn’t,” the pope responded. He once wrote, recalling his Italian peasant background, “There are three ways to face ruin: Women, gambling and farming. My father chose the most boring one.”
Mirth and Catholicism are no strangers. Medieval passion plays and processions often featured comedy. Thomas More argued against the Reformation with barbed digs at Martin Luther and others.
Not everyone gets the joke. President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized and even tried to silence comedians who have lampooned him, including Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel—both Catholics. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights regularly views comics as attackers of the Catholic Church. The League has lit into Jon Stewart, Trevor Noah and Denis Leary, among others, for going too far. A particularly sensitive issue is when comics go after the Catholic Church on sex abuse. The Catholic League regularly objects point that the problem is widespread and that it’s unfair to single out the Catholic Church.
But even Catholic League leader Bill Donohue has appreciated the alliance of faith and comedy. He’s come to the defense of Whoopi Goldberg’s Sister Act and its take on convent life. He responded good-naturedly when South Park, in its takedown of The Da Vinci Code, incorporated Donohue as a protagonist in an ill-hatched plot to take over the world (yes, the plot is as convoluted as that of the original Da Vinci Code).
Sometimes comics get serious, infusing spiritual and social issues with a faith perspective. Colbert, a Catholic who has taught Sunday School, has spoken on the spiritual response to grief. When he was a child, his father and two older brothers died in a plane crash, and he found solace with his mother in prayer—and in comedy.
Fugelsang pokes at religious hypocrisy, displays of off-putting piety and the temptation to cozy up to the powerful. In his book’s preface, he offers a joke: “I’ve come to view Jesus the way I’ve come to view Elvis. I love the guy, but some of the fan clubs terrify me.”
When times are tough—and they always are, for someone, somewhere—prayer is always an option, both for comfort and for solidarity. But don’t forget the clowns. They are willing to go where the more pious dare not, providing a kind of religious education that has room for laughter.
Image: Unsplash/Kevin Snow
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