By now, there can be no one left on the internet who hasn't heard of the LOLCats phenomenon, based at the blog I Can Has Cheezburger? These pictures of cats, adorned with short phrases in a stilted version of English known as lolspeak (for "laughing out loud" speak), are everywhere, and they have spawned a number of imitations.
The latest is LOLSaints, a quirky attempt to bring the LOLCats phenomenon to matters of faith. To be honest, I'm not certain what I think. I'm a firm believer that Christians need a sense of humor, and some of these images, such as "The Satan Smackdown" and "Master iz Old . . . He Forgits," are quite amusing. Others, such as "Can You Say This About a Saint?," seem to cross the line from humor into irreverence.
LOLSaints is a new website, and it will be interesting to see if it catches on. What do you think? Is it all good clean fun, or are there some things that we just shouldn't joke about? Leave your thoughts in the comments!
As a huge ICHC fan, I was wondering what LOLSaints would really be about. While some of the captions are pretty snarky, the information about each saint seems solid, so far.
As someone whose kitchen is full of holy cards and other saint images, I can’t say it’s wrong to teach others about saints…even through humor. (After all, Sixty Saints for Girls is written in a breezy style…)
As long as LOLSaints doesn’t publish inaccurate or disparaging information about saints, I think the website has a good reason to exist.
IMHO, Catholics should respect the saints. We should not joke about the saints.
I’m with Allen. I think that it’s disrespectful to those who have earned, and deserve, our utmost respect…
I just think for the most part…the LOL Saints are dumb. I tend to love humor, believe Jesus does, too. But these aren’t funny.
I would say that if it gives Protestants one more reason to laugh AT Catholics, it isn’t a good thing. However, if it informs Protestants about the saints, and it is in a noble way, I wouldn’t mind. But these are just dumb.
Did not find it funny. I only looked at the first page. Poor taste.
I don’t think that they are particularly bad, just not funny, at all.
Yow! Tough crowd.
In the past couple days since I wrote this post, I’ve been thinking some more about why I had some uneasiness. Initially, I just thought it was the one post (”Can You Say This About a Saint?“). Anyone who has not seen the incorrupt body of a saint in person cannot imagine the awe that it inspires. Such miracles, of course, are not necessary for our faith, but they can indeed have a profound effect on it.
But it seems to me that there might be a broader problem here. I don’t spend a lot of time looking at LOLCats, but I have found most of the ones I’ve seen amusing. So, what’s the difference?
I don’t think it’s simply that the saints deserve our respect. That goes without saying, yet we know that, in our life here on earth, we can, for instance, respect our families and friends and coworkers and yet still make jokes about them, as long as those jokes aren’t cutting and mean. And in The Bad Catholic’s Guide to Good Living, John Zmirak and Denise Matychowiak are able to mix humor–some it very biting and close to irreverent–into their retelling of the lives of the saints, without ever (in my opinion) crossing the line.
That’s when it hit me: What bothers me, and what (I think) makes some people find LOLSaints not funny, is that we’re mixing categories. LOLSpeak works with cats and other animals, and it might even work with children. (I think that’s one of the reasons why I thought the best LOLSaints post was “Master iz Old . . . He Forgits.”)
It doesn’t really work with adult subjects, whether saints or otherwise. If the LOLSaints were done as a traditional “funny caption” contest, they might work. Some would undoubtedly still find them disrespectful, but I think the parallel with the joking that goes on in a happy family would be more clear.
What do you think?
I believe that what we enjoy with the cats is autopromorphism. With the saints I find no humor of sorts.
Scott,
It’s not my kind of humor (the “bad spelling/poor grammar is in itself funny” school of humor). I can certainly see the jokes, I just don’t happen to be amused by them. But that’s not really what you asked.
I took a look at the about page for the LOLSaints site, and at the site for the creator of it, and I take him at his word that he’s not meaning to cross any lines, and that he means to draw people into a richer understanding of the saints. But that’s not really what you asked either.
But what you asked does, I think, touch on those things up there. I had the self-inflicted (mis)fortune of spending a couple of years of my undergraduacy working (suffering) closely with the intertwined questions of what’s funny, why, and what should not be joked about. We finally decided that what should not be joked about were those things about themselves people had no control over. On one side of that line were accidents of birth, and on the fair game side of that line was an individual’s chosen way of being in the world, even if (when) that dealt directly with an accident of birth.
So, by my lights, “Saints” as a subject of humor is certainly not an off-limits category, to answer your question directly. They weren’t saints as an accident of birth, but became such through their way of being in the world. And many of the jokes appear to be more about the way an image of a saint looks as an idea of ’saint’ rather than particular jokes about the actual saint in the image (these latter jokes being more likely to fail).
Where the line is on any particular joke ‘working’ or ‘being irreverent’ comes down to the sense of humor of the individual encountering the joke (unless, of course, the Church has a technical definition for ‘irreverent’).
And it is a sense of humor, much like the physical senses. “The joke is funny!” “No it’s not!” “That’s teal!” “No, it’s blue-green!” The edges are rarely precise, and even for a single individual the context of the joke can push the response one way or the other along the continuum–even for the same joke encountered in different places. And like physical senses, some people just don’t respond to certain stimuli (like being tone deaf or color blind).
By the way, it’s not that I dislike them all (or any of them, they just generally don’t work for me). However, I think the one I like best is “I’ve Been Transmogrified!” I did LOL out loud at that one. And I think it’s interesting that the one you like best is one I see as a babies=food joke (which, given the baby in question is an interesting theologicial item…)
Take care,
SM
May be for a Catholic who has firm faith, LOLSaints doesn’t gave any negative effect. But for catechumens and children, they might think that Saints are as cute as the cats or dogs. They might respect Saints just like they respect the cats and dogs. Unless someone guides them to differentiate the the LOLSaints and LOLCats.
In my opinion, this is not a good way to lead us to God.
I still think the amazing mosaic of Jesus with the caption “Your sins hurt me this much” is about one of the funniest and most honest things I have ever seen! To me, it is a visual reminder of God as Father, treating us as his naughty children when we err or sin.
In all things we need to make God relevant to life and our children today – using the the means that they feel comfortable with and that speak to them will engage them more than remaining aloof.
… and did it ever hurt anyone to laugh at themselves occasionally?
Thanks for all your comments! I really do appreciate the insights in this posting, as well as each of the comments. I took a little time to reply to some of the comments in this blog post on LOLSaints.com. I would absolutely *love* to talk more about these issues.
Also, if you haven’t already, make sure you read the ‘About’ page on LOLSaints.com; I hope that it can answer some of your questions.
To reiterate what some other people have said in this comments section: what does it for me is the short, but legitimate bio left with each saint, including the link that each has to the Catholic Encyclopedia or other sources for more information about each saint. We must always respect the saints, but we must not forget that they too were humans, they too were sinners, and we too can be holy as they were. Everyone makes jokes, including the saints. If we that visit the site all take the time to not only view the joke but read the saint’s bio, we’ve given brightness to our day through laughter (if they’re funny for you), and we’ve learned new ways of following God.