Parish Priest, Peter File, is delighted to have made a full recovery from his recent bout of COVID-19. He firmly believes that, just like Christ, it was the man upstairs who resurrected him from the dead, specifically choosing him over all the pensioners who perished in his flock.
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“Yes, us priests have come in for some serious flack over the last three decades, mainly for buggering and beating children, but sure ya can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Admittedly, some of my esteemed colleagues took a bit too much pleasure in God’s work of inflicting endless misery and suffering on society’s most vulnerable, but I see my rebirth as a definitive and resounding signal from our Lord that all is now forgiven.”
“Does The Old Testament not demonstrably prove that God loves nothing more than whimsically slaughtering millions of innocent people? He could have killed me but didn’t, and to repay him this bounty, I will endlessly sermonise about his mystery and glory whilst giving no explanation as to why he let so many others die this past year, often isolated from family and in excruciating agony.”
I put to Father. File that it was surely medical science that saved his proverbial bacon and that perhaps he should have taken the necessary precautions to avoid infection that us mere mortals were instructed to do so.
“Well, I am God’s chosen one, serving under his laws only, and so I don’t need to wear a mask when I sleep with….I mean comfort COVID infected corpses.”
I asked Fr. File why would God rescue a solitary priest over the scores faithful worshippers? Indeed, what good is one without the other?
“On the face of it, having one’s entire fanbase annihilated is not good for any business model, but luckily for the church the majority of the deceased willed their life savings to us. Whilst crunching the numbers on my death bed, I soon realised that this financial bonanza amounted to far more than decades of the pennies my minions would ever throw in the collection basket.
“Another crucial factor in pumping those figures was the ever-reliable sympathy dollar, the sicker I got the more the online donations rolled in. To further boost revenues, I instructed my press secretary to circulate a false rumour online of my untimely demise. You could say it’s a bit like when a rock star dies they experience more sales than when they were alive.”
“I had a live ticker tape machine installed in my hospital room along with six LCD screens displaying such data as last years collection earnings, current fiscal year revenue streams and future projections. The Bitcoin slump fucked me right in the ass till it gushed red, but not to worry, the parish are making up this shortfall by chasing down the surviving mass goers that donated nothing.”
“Unfortunately, there is no time machine to transport me back to when I could gleefully name and shame from the pulpit these skinflints, so instead I have initiated litigation proceedings against both living and families of the dead. Based on the diocesan data analytics, I’m feeling extremely bullish about Q3 and Q4 projections. The Bishop even jested with me that I should probably die more often!”
