Blessed are the sourpusses

Last year Pope Francis wrote his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium in which he famously lamented the presence of "sourpusses" within the Church.  For a papal document it was notably full of invective, so much so that I still suspect that it was ghost written by Mark Shea.  Pope Francis (or whoever) developed a characteristic, and almost nonsensical, style that I frequently parody among friends.  We call each other "primping neo-Donatist sad sacks".  (It's all in good fun.)

After Evangelii Gaudium threw down the gauntlet against sourpusses, Father Barron picked it up and slapped us again.  In his DVD Catholicism: New Evangelization, he goes to great lengths to describe how if you're not happy, your not saved.  He even finds a pretty, teenaged girl to describe how happiness is equal to joyfulness is equal to holiness.  He fauns over Cardinal Dolan who's shown back-slapping and gladhanding with the parishioners at St Patrick's Cathedral. Well, I'm not so sure.

First of all, I'm not sure that faithful Catholic teenaged girls are the only ones who laugh and smile and enjoy having fun with their friends.  Furthermore, Cardinal Dolan was getting ready to shutter dozens of parishes in New York, which is apparently just fine with the Governor of New York and the Mayor of New York City, so he doesn't seem to be any more effective at evangelization than the comparatively reserved Bishop Conley who has 44 seminarians in a diocese of 100,000 faithful.

Secondly, everyone wants to be happy, and lots of people seem happy.  The current crop of pop-tarts like Miley Cyrus and Beyonce seem happy as they cavort around half-naked.  Is that our standard? If we're not happier than Miley Cyrus we have no hope of spreading the good news?  Do we need to be happy even it it kills us, just like the old Emerson Lake and Palmer song?

Right before your eyes,
We pull laughter from the skies
And he laughs until he cries
And he dies, and he dies.

Finally, the idea that "people will want to be like us if they see we're happy" is something that sounds like it should be true, but I've never seen any evidence that it is true.  I've probably watched 200 episodes of The Journey Home, and I've read dozens of conversion stories.  No one has ever said they joined the Catholic Church because Catholics were inexplicably happy.  I've heard several people say they joined because Catholics that they knew were able to remain peaceful during times of trouble, but that's not the same as outward happiness.  Chesterton once said that the Catholic Church has a thousand doors and no two people enter at the same angle, but apparently none of those doors pass through the laugh factory.  There are groups that get members by their outward happiness, but they are either cults or followers of some New Age nonsense.

We read a lot in the scriptures about how you present your self. We are told to make a joyful noise to the Lord (I should forward that to our liturgist. The noise the choir makes isn't very joyful to me). We're told to not look dismal when we fast.   But Jesus also said "blessed are those who mourn", not "suck it up, you jackwagon".  I don't remember St Paul cutting up with Timothy.  I don't remember reading about Peter and John exchanging knock-knock jokes.

People come in all shapes and sizes and temperaments.  The ancients described 4 humors: sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic.  Jesus came to save them all.   Had he not, Heaven would have no scientists, engineers, accountants or lawyers or Germans, and would instead be populated entirely by salesmen, sports casters and politicians and Irish.  And that would be a strange place.

Jesus came so that our joy would be complete. But joy is not the same as happiness.  You can have joy even as you mourn the death of a loved one.  You can chase happiness with no trace of joy in your heart.

So grumblebums, westminster crabbies, sourpusses and crabbypants unite!  To you belongs the Kingdom of God.  Jesus will wipe away every tear, and perhaps you can smile about that, but don't hurt yourself!