I think my stand had been softening with the realization that many (maybe most) people use religion to channel their better natures, but it only took a single funeral to fully jerk me back into reality and remind me unequivocally that clergy are leeching, verminous scum.

I attended the funeral of a friend, Paul Wilson, on Friday. His father's family are all believers despite it obviously not being an important part of Paul's life anymore - not that I knew Paul exceptionally well but Pentecostalism isn't something that goes unnoticed in even the most casual of relationships.

So, in a demonstration of the dictum that funerals are for the living, not for the dead, Paul's father's family had a Baptist pastor preside over the memorial service. It was bad enough that this guy hadn't known Paul a day of his life, but deigned to eulogize him (unapologetically). I found it barely tolerable that he insisted on pretending that Paul wasn't dead, but I was able to stomach it because this is what believers do to comfort themselves and is presumably what he was hired for. But the most wretched part I had to witness on Friday was that this stranger made his sales pitch, preying upon the raw emotions of those who had gathered to grieve, in a vain attempt to win a few more souls for Jesus.

It is truly a rare breed of cocksucker that would try to rip off a grieving widow, but that just happens to be the clergyman's stock in trade (at least when he is not assraping boys). May all clergy die painful, wasting deaths and be laid to rest in gutters beside highways to be unmourned, unsung, and unremembered.