Even if a giant framed copy of the Constitution fell on trump and killed him, I wouldn’t shed a tear, but neither would I find it funny.
Again (not speaking for @solost here but just myself), I can see how some cartoon of that happening might be hilarious. And if it did happen in real life I can’t pretend I’d be heartbroken.
But nah, observing a living person being suddenly killed in an accident—not in a movie or cartoon, in reality—is not something I’d find enjoyable or funny, no matter how much I despise the person in question.
Do you honestly not understand that there is a context difference between a simple workplace accident and someone who dedicated the entirety of his life to convincing people to worship the very symbol that fell on him? You are trying to turn an extremely specific circumstance into a general statement. Just like it isn’t generally funny when someone dies from a snakebite, but when it is a snake handling preacher in a snake handling church, that is hilarious.
I agree with all of this. And I did not watch the video, nor have I ever watched a video of someone being killed.
There’s a cohort of people who get really angry and aggressive when folks don’t perform empathy and deference solemnly enough to their liking. People are going to laugh at things. For all kinds of reasons. Not all laughter is sinister, and not all laughter comes out of spite, hatred, or uncaring. This is not a revolutionary idea, but it is a constant source of surprise and consternation to some.
And, it’s also probably true that we are, these days, ever more trained to treat current events and news, even local news, as entertainment items- devoid of meaning and unconnected to ourselves beyond the feelings we can extract from them in the moment.
There is an inherent and indisputable irony in what transpired here. It’s ok to acknowledge that. It’s also ok to find it “funny”. Feelings are messy. Events are messy. Irony doesn’t cease to exist when tragedy shows up. Death is sad, but also inevitable. Both generally, and specifically/situationally, there is a broad range of responses that are ‘appropriate’, and those include thinking that a priest being killed by a falling crucifix is funny. “Hoist with his own petard” is part of the vernacular for a reason.
Personally, this irony elicits a small chuckle and acknowledgement. However, I think that this story has comedic staying power only for those who are deriving joy from the way the irony reinforces their opinions that religious belief itself is laughable (ie; where is your God now?).
ETA: I guess there is also the response of @Darren_Garrison , who finds this category of irony (person associated with thing X is killed by thing X) “hilarious”… which seems at the extreme end of healthy response. But maybe no more so than “there is nothing funny whatsoever, and anyone who does think there’s something funny has something wrong with them.”
It does get a bit to @LSLGuy 's observation that we are apt to respond to real life things on our screens in the same way we’d respond to fiction. Maybe we’re all better off keeping some of those responses in check, and practicing pro-active empathy, even when it’s a story from a distant place?
A sculptor working on what he likely considered his crowning achievement in life up to that point being killed by his sculpture is, I think, an irony on par with a priest being killed by a crucifix. There seems to be some mindset that there’s an element of poetic justice to it as well, like the priest somehow deserved it, as in your snake handler example. The snake handler was more responsible for his own fate than the priest, but I would not think it’s funny that a snake handler died from a snake bite just because it was a stupid thing to do, any more than I would find it funny if a teenager died from doing some stupid stunt that they thought would make them viral on TikTok.
This has zero in common with anything like that. Those were both purposeful assassinations of assholes, this was a random accident to some random person who, as far we know did nothing wrong. What in the world are you talking about?
In the abstract, on a cartoon level, sure I can see the irony in a priest being killed by a cross. But bragging that you (not you David, several others in this thread) actually found it “hilarious” and “laughed for a full 20 minutes” is just edgelord behavior and only shows how fucked up you are.
“Convincing people to worship” is a kind of weird way of describing the duties of a Catholic priest officiating at Mass, with a congregation pretty much entirely composed of people already convinced to worship in that faith. (Also, speaking of Catholics as “worshipping crucifixes” sounds like a weird cultural survival of Calvinist “anti-popery” propaganda still lingering in many Protestant-majority societies. No, Catholics and other Christians don’t actually worship crucifixes or crosses or icons etc.)
Irrespective of that, though, even if Fr. Sanchez had spent his entire professional life on street corners cajoling non-worshippers to attend Mass, there’s still a significant difference between “horrifically ironic” and “funny”.
It seems clear that a lot of posters here may be projecting their (not unreasonable) resentment of Christianity or the Catholic Church as institutions onto one innocent victim of accidental catastrophe, which is not cool. Listen, folks, if you want to laugh about, say, lightning destroying a church building without killing any congregation members or other people, or a church organization going bankrupt because, I don’t know, the pastor put the entire funds on a Kalshi bet about the imminent revelation of the Antichrist’s identity based on what he thought was a vision from the Archangel Gabriel or whatever… then knock yourselves out.
Or if the crucifix in the Guayaquil church had smashed the altar or something without taking out human beings, laugh all you want! There’s nothing wrong with laughing at the misfortunes of an institution you disapprove of.
Being callously amused about the actual physical deaths of human individuals simply for being associated with that institution, though, is malevolent and gross. That’s not a million miles away from Westboro Baptist Church territory, with bigots holding up signs mocking the deceased at US servicemember funerals because they’re upset with US policies.
@Eonwe, @solost, and @Eyebrows_0f_Doom just above each nailed a big part of this.
“Funny” comes in several flavors. Watching a vid of a little kid freaking out in joy over a gift, or seeing Grandma or whatever is funny-happy. As noted by several folks above, irony has a tinge of funny in it. And this random death was both tragic and ironic.
A similar, but IMO distinct, flavor of funny is incongruity. Most jokes and stand-up rely heavily on that device. The audience is expecting the story to go here, and suddenly the punchline is over there. That triggers laughter as subconscious reaction to your predictor having been fooled.
This outcome was certainly incongruous. And hence triggers the incongruity response to some degree in everyone. Getting to the point of “hilarious” is quite a bit over the top to my tastes. That suggests someone who doesn’t even notice the accompanying tragedy.
And I’m pretty well known here as an active anti-religionist and a fairly unsympathetic character to the random stuff of life.
I think it also illustrates how a lot of people have become way desensitized to seeing real-world violent and catastrophic deaths of humans shown onscreen. No, I don’t think most people really consider that to be entertainment, but the emotional impacts of seeing filmed entertainment deaths (in movies etc.) and seeing filmed real deaths are becoming less distinct.
By “crucifix” I’m referring specifically to crosses with Jesus on them, not all crosses. And Catholics and other Christians do worship Jesus, and a large amount (arguably the majority of it) is because he “died for their sins”. So while they don’t worship the physical object depicting Jesus on the cross, they worship Jesus because he was on a cross.
Well stated, and that’s precisely what I meant.
Yes. And what precisely makes us have a ‘this is funny’ response to things is often not something that we understand at a conscious level or are good at describing. So we’re left just saying “I thought that was funny, don’t you get it?”.
We allow ourselves to describe other complicated and situational feelings using single words (“love” can be felt in infinite different ways in infinite situations. I love pasta, and I love my wife, and I love my friends, and I love the color blue, and and and) and don’t get tripped up on it, but we demand that “funny” means just one thing. That we can’t describe. But we know it’s wrong to feel.
First thing: I didn’t watch the video of the priest dying, purposely, because I have the principle never to watch videos of people being killed or dying, not because I couldn’t stand it (I have seen some such videos involuntarily, and they didn’t traumatize me), but because I don’t want to satisfy my hidden sensationalist needs with stuff like that. It’s always disrespectful to the victims. In this case, well, the irony of the situation gave me a chuckle, but I’m also sorry for the priest and especially for the congregation that had to witness this. Really no event to get Schadenfreude out of.
Not the poster but I see the through line clearly?
Some here feel that institutional religion or Christianity is more evil than an insurance company or Kirk’s brand of conservatism, so pretty much same thing: these are not real people with others who cared about them to them; they are symbols, only symbols. To these people a priest is not a random person but someone doing harm to the world.
And my disagreement with that belief about religion as a broad brush stroke is not the issue for me as much as the dehumanization of real people who we know nothing about into such that their deaths or suffering are “hilarious” …
I bet they’d really bust a gut if the crucifix knocked over something that caused a fire and many of the congregation died or suffered severe burns. All that while looking to religion for comfort! Turns the funny to eleven it does!!!
(Although again admittedly I am hypocritical enough to know that if the priest had at that moment been preaching about God striking down sinners, I’d see the funny.)
There’s also Kurt Gödel, who spent his life studying paradoxes, then stopped eating and starved to death because he became convinced someone was trying to poison him.
Nobody can tell me what I’m “allowed” to find funny.
This was funny. Tragic, but still funny.
ETA: writing the word “funny” multiple times in one post really makes that word seem stupid to me, for some reason…
Or he could have been reading Revelation 22:12.
Whatever your feelings toward organized religion, giggling over a priest dying a violent death while saying mass renders you, at least in this instance, a fucking asshole.
We’ve already had non-believers chime in in agreement, so I don’t believe it’s typical of atheists. Apparently we’ve narrowed it down to a subset.
Nobody is telling you what you are “allowed” to do. You are completely free in that regard And we are free to judge you for it … Funny that!
A tremendous misunderstanding of Catholic teachings here, FYI.
The broad brushstroke was not my intent. But just as not everyone who feels insurance companies cause massive harms were pleased at the murder of an insurance executive.