I’m always pleased to find articles about St. Philip Neri in the Catholic press. Unfortunately, some are less helpful than others. I was disappointed with Shaun McAfee’s recent article in the National Catholic Register, “St. Philip Neri Was a Humorist, But Not a Comedian.” The style is tortured and riddled with typos, and the content leaves much to be desired. Key episodes from the life of St. Philip are either misunderstood or handled clumsily.

Case in point—when the young Pippo Buono infamously pushed his sister, he was not plotting a premeditated revenge against some grievance. He was reacting somewhat thoughtlessly to her childish interruption of the prayers he and his other sister were saying. Mr. McAfee casts the episode in a much darker light than any of St. Philip’s biographers.

More egregiously, Mr. McAfee throws together all kinds of unrelated phenomena as evidence of St. Philip’s penchant for holy humour. Here he is:

Yes, Neri was known to show up to important events with half his beard shaved, give incorrect walking directions to his disciples, read a book of jokes, or pause for more than 10 minutes in the middle of the consecration at Mass. When he did each of these things he caused a mix of emotions in others, but it always ended up producing the same end state: increased humility, and increased patience.

Two problems present themselves. First, we can see Mr. McAfee’s unusual, jarring use of “Neri” to refer to St. Philip. This shorthand is unheard of in the literature on St. Philip, and its impersonal, journalistic tone sits uneasily with a saint of such singular personality. Secondly, not all of these actions were done for the same reason. Nor were they all jokes! St. Philip didn’t pause at the consecration to elicit edified chuckles. He did so because he was rapt in an ecstasy and couldn’t help himself plummeting into deepest adoration before the Eucharistic God. And it wasn’t just ten minutes—it was usually over an hour, sometimes up to two. Even Mr. McAfee’s details are wrong.

Still, I suppose I ought not complain too much. Mr. McAfee does draw mostly the right lessons from St. Philip’s humour. One wishes, however, that he done so with greater artfulness and more care for the nuances of his subject.