God's Jesters: Humour from the Pulpit

A.J. Pell is rector of Christ Church in Hope, B.C., editor of the
Canadian Evangelical Review, and an instructor of Liturgy, Anglican
Studies Programme at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Freelance journalist Dennis McCloskey was an altar boy in the early
1960s, and over the years has collected jokes, funny stories, and puns
from Roman Catholic clergy across Canada. While almost any reader will
chuckle at many of them, only a reader with a church background, and
preferably a Roman Catholic background, will likely understand the punch
lines in them all.

McCloskey begins the book with two short chapters on humor as a form of
ministry in the careers of Father Bill Harding and Father Bill Scanlon.
(McCloskey himself believes that laughter is good for the soul.) He even
includes a few jokes that he’s collected from friends, relatives, and
other laypeople. But the jokes tend to be funny only once, so scattering
two or three more chapters about other priests throughout the text might
have enticed the reader to open the book more than once. Nonetheless,
God’s Jesters is an entertaining compilation of mainly clergy humor.