“Even better are jokes that the popes themselves tell,” he said, referring to one time when Pope John XXIII made fun of an archbishop’s growing girth. Asked once how many people worked in the Vatican, John XXIII replied, “about half.”

Three priests—a Dominican, a Franciscan and a Jesuit—walk into a bar.

According to the Rev. James Martin, it’s not only the opening to a good joke, but quite possibly the saving grace of religion.

Martin’s new book, “Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life,” says religious people would be a lot happier—and holier—if they lightened up and took themselves a little less seriously.

“Joy, as a number of spiritual writers have said, is the surest sign of the Holy Spirit,” the Jesuit priest said at a recent gig at Georgetown University.

But, he continued, “there are certain Roman Catholics who seem to think that being religious means being deadly serious all the time.”

Martin, culture editor of the Jesuit magazine America and the unofficial chaplain to Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report,” is, well, wickedly funny.

Martin conceived the idea for his book while promoting his earlier book, “My Life With the Saints.” He found that audiences seemed most interested in stories that showed the saints to be full of joy and good humor. Or, in other words, a little less pedestal, a little more human.

“I think Catholics are so used to hearing about the saints as kind of dour, gloomy, depressed people, that that was a surprise to them,” Martin said. “It was almost as if Catholics were hungry for that permission, almost, to enjoy themselves.”

The other thing he found was the irony of working with “professional” religious people who were, “in a word, grim.”

While joy shows a person is growing closer to God, Martin argues, it is also crucial to the health of the church. “Humor evangelizes,” he said simply.

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