“Behold the face of a traitor!” cried Bishop McElroy as he gripped Sipe’s desiccated head and addressed a stunned congregation. “Sure, I sat on the damning information he gave me, but only because he delivered it in an underhanded fashion, via a process server posing as a donor, after I told him I was too busy to meet! And what does he do? He posts it on his website, condemning me to a life of insignificance in this unintellectual, unimportant backwater nothing of a diocese!” He then instructed St. Lukewarm pastor Fr. Charles Chucklehead to mount the head above the church’s door, “where it can serve as both welcome to our friends and warning to our foes, as in the days of old.”

San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy surprised critics and supporters alike last Sunday when he ordered the body of deceased La Jollan and sex-abuse whistleblower Richard Sipe to be exhumed and burned in public before the 11 a.m. children’s Mass at St. Lukewarm’s Catholic Church in Rancho Placido. Sipe, who died last month, was a former priest and psychotherapist who wrote extensively about clerical sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. In 2016, he presented Bishop McElroy with a letter detailing the crimes of numerous high-ranking members of the clergy in the United States, including Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. McElroy ignored the letter, and when McCarrick’s abusive behavior subsequently came to light, so did McElroy’s knowledge and inaction. With that, the progressive-minded bishop — a champion and favorite of Pope Francis — saw his expectations for eventually escaping his podunk post in SoCal and climbing into the Cardinal’s chair in Washington D.C. go up in smoke. Soon after, so did Sipe’s remains.

“Now you come to me and you say, ‘Bishop McElroy, give me justice.’ But you don’t ask with respect. You don’t offer friendship. You don’t even think to call me Your Excellency. Instead, you come into my house under false pretense of giving me a huge wad of cash and you ask me to go after the very people I need in order to advance.”

“The Holy Roman Catholic Church has a long and proud tradition of making public demonstrations of hostility toward those who are Her enemies,” noted McElroy at the event. “This is right and just: she is the True Church of Jesus Christ, who noted that He was the Truth itself, and so Her enemies are enemies not only of Jesus, but of the Truth. And an enemy of the Truth is a friend of Lies, and therefore, of the Prince of Lies, Satan himself. And Satan’s cohort is destined to burn, as it is written in Holy Scripture. I don’t hate Richard Sipe; I love him. But justice demands that he not be allowed to rest in peace after keeping me from doing the same.”

Reminded that a lengthy stay in San Diego would give him ample time to minister to the immigrants and refugees he has so tirelessly championed, McElroy replied simply, “Who’s next?”