To my Philippine flock,

It is with great alarm that I write you today, on the occasion of the Church’s resumption of services, to order that an Inquisition (Spanish, or local, if costs are prohibitive) be launched in the Philippines.

While I understand that our religion has had to let its hair down since the ’60s, I believe that a good smiting, judiciously applied, glorifies the Church as much as it keeps its flock on the proper path.

When the pernicious hellspawn (of hell) lobbied for the Reproductive Health Bill in Congress, and we sent our local Joan of Arc, Quezon City Rep. Annie Susano to rally her district’s schoolchildren and indigents against the bill, I knew that the fight for Good is not necessarily clean.

When she was not burned at the stake afterwards, I understood that martyrdom takes many forms. Some are burnt at the stake, while others have to feed and shell out P200 each to a crowd of the faithful. Each must carry their burden with equal devotion.

When Marikina launched its Gay Flores de Mayo, I figured it was a way to reach out  to the gay community, whom, although we consign to the fires of hell, are very creative and often do such a great job of props and set design for our Christmas pageants.

When Cebu Rep. Pablo Garcia likened your President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to Jesus Christ, who was also unpopular in surveys,  I winced a little, but I figured that he was just speaking figuratively. He wasn’t the  Bible, after all.

But when I read that Legacy Group Owner Celso Delos Angeles played Jesus Christ in a Lenten passion play, I felt an earthquake soon after, and, lo, a sound much like some sort of trumpet.

While the Good Book teaches us not to judge our fellow man, it also teaches, if between the lines, that our Lord was not a lying, scheming businessman who sold insurance policies that he knew he couldn’t make good on. He was, in fact, a carpenter.

My camerlengo and I were one in asking, “Quis In Fuck Est Is?” as we scrambled to the secret Vatican archives to consult Church prophecies on false prophets and wolves in sheep’s  clothing.

We have decided that excommunication of an entire country is a remedy beyond all logic, and would tie me up signing the millions of certificates prclaiming you dead in the eyes of God, and true to the Church teachings on free will, leave the matter of running the Inquisition entirely up to you.

We plead with you to act swiftly before virgins start giving birth to mudfish and pigs with two heads start to roam the land.