Can we laugh at God?

What did the Pope say to a group of comedians? Not the start of a gag, I'm afraid, but a genuine audience with His Holiness. 

In June Pope Frances met with over 100 comedians, including names such as Whoopi Goldberg, Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Merchant.

Much of the news this generated was little more than celebrity name-dropping, but there was a moment of genuine interest and even possibly controversy.

After a series of fairly predictable comments about the power of comedy to bring people together and the positivity of laughter, the Pope is reported to have said that is it OK to laugh at God. This, apparently, is "not blasphemy". The Pope did warn that comedians should be careful not to offend believers with their gags, but suggested that if done correctly, laughing about God and religion could all be good fun.

This is a far cry from the po-faced reaction to films like Jesus Christ Superstar and The Life of Brian. Most notably, Malcolm Muggeridge and Mervyn Stockwood (the then Bishop of Southwark) debated the issues arising from the film with two members of the Monty Python team, John Cleese and Michael Palin. Looking back it is pretty tortuous to watch.

In response to the Pope's remarks Priest and comedian Ravi Holy penned a piece in the Guardian arguing that this kind of comedy could be a good example of 'punching up' - the principle whereby making fun of those more powerful than you is OK.

Mouse's take is that one really should be pretty careful when making jokes about things which are of huge importance to others, although religion certainly shouldn't be 'off limits'. Laughing at God, however. I'm not at all sure. I'm not even sure that is what the Pope intended to say - he was speaking in Italian and reports around the precise words in the original language are impossible to track down (let me know if you manage it), so it is possible there is a bit of a translation issue here. Perhaps Francis intended to say that laughing 'about' God is not blasphemous. 

My suggestion would be to laugh at religion and those of us who make fools of ourselves within it, but if you're planning on laughing at God, I would just advise that you'll get the chance to find out whether He thought it was funny soon enough, so make sure you are on safe ground.