A young woman talking loudly on her cell phone walking through an airport goes to the bathroom and comes out with her dress pulled into her underwear and toilet paper hanging out. The Rev. Bill Byrne, dressed in full priest garb, reacted with laughter, causing a woman sitting next to him to question whether God would find that amusing. Byrne said, “Darling, that’s proof that there is a God!”
A panel consisting of a rabbi, a priest and a minister discussed the importance of humor and its relationship with religion yesterday at the Memorial Chapel. The Art Gliner Humor Center on the campus – the only one of its kind in the world, according to Director Larry Mintz – hosted the event for about 40 students and faculty. The forum was peppered with personal stories such as Byrne’s.
“We want to tell people the truth, but by using love,” said Byrne, director of the Catholic Student Center. “The core of love is joy- what is more intertwined with joy than smile and laughter?”
The Rev. Jack Carlson said humor and religion are inextricably linked, because comedy can help humans acknowledge truths about themselves that may be too harsh to admit if said any other way.
“Humor can ease the way for things that need to be said,” said Carlson, minister of Highland Presbyterian Church in Harford County.
Each panelist also used humor in their own way to make their points. Carlson played the guitar and sang a song about playing right field in Little League – the position for daydreamers and the less athletic. Carlson used the song to make a point that everyone feels like they’re playing right field at some point in their life.
Rabbi Elli Fischer emphasized the important role humor plays in religion.
“Humor helps us find a balance between being too serious and not being serious at all,” Fischer said.
He opened his remarks with a joke: “For over 1,500 years, rabbis have been making jokes,” Fishcer said. “Many of them bad jokes.”
Jews have used humor for years to “show tormentors they haven’t defeated you,” Fisher said. He said many in the Jewish community use irony and sarcasm to cope with painful legacies of the Inquisition and the Holocaust.
When asked about the role of Catholicism and humor by a crowd member, Byrne replied the farther a Catholic is from Rome, the less funny, and comedy has a long history in the church.
Byrne used the example of St. Lawrence, a deacon who defied a Roman prefect’s order to turn over the wealth of the Church to Rome by instead gathering and bringing the poor, orphans and widows to the prefect. St. Lawrence was sentenced to death by “roasting.”
“After he had been roasted for a while, Lawrence yelled to his guards, ‘Turn me over, this side is done!'” Byrne said.
The comment, like so many others during the night, garnered roars of laughter from the crowd. Fischer and Byrne’s tounge-in-cheek comments were among some of the most popular in the crowd, leading Carlson to admit “I am Presbyterian – we don’t have any humor” to the chuckling audience.
Students at the event held similar views to those on the panel. Christi Chew, a senior physics major, said it is important to take serious situations lightly sometimes.
“It’s important,” Chew said. “If you take religion too seriously, people don’t respond well.”
The panel, the first of it’s kind held by the center, came about as a result of a Diamondback article about Byrne’s popularity – in part caused by his vivacious and hilarious sermons.
Byrne, who students have previously compared to a stand-up comic, said he believes God uses humor just as humans do to get across larger messages about love and life.
“My belief is that God is hysterically funny, and he uses humor to show his love,” Byrne said.
Contact reporter Jeff Amoros at amorosdbk@gmail.com.
