The first witless reaction to the conviction of Celdran was a bill filed on the last day of Congress to repeal Article 133 for being an old law. Actually, the older the law the more it should be respected, unless its repeated violation was never prosecuted, in which case it may be said to have fallen into desuetude. But there have been prosecutions of Article 133.

It is witless to say that Article 133 is a law that benefits only one religion, the Catholic Church, because the Penal code was originally written in Spanish. Yes Spanish but not Latin.

Actually it doesn't favor the Catholic Church or any religion. It benefits the sacrilegious, because it takes away from any religion and any of its faithful the legal defense of properly beating to death anyone who commits sacrilege. With Article 133, the faithful lose the right to claim in defense of their feelings, the right to beat Carlos to death with brass candlesticks on the ground that no law protects the most basic right in the constitution, the freedom to practice a religion.

To practice a religion not to desecrate it, Article 133 shifts the right to defend religious rites from the faithful to the state, so the faithful can't get their rocks off by kicking a blasphemer to death which gives you a good workout. Do not test this proposition in a mosque or in one of the more virile Protestant churches. You will either die on the spot or never walk straight again. Just do it in a Catholic Church, Catholics are soft.

Article 133 is the only thing that kept Carlos from going overboard and instead of pissing in a chalice, politely raise up a placard with the name of Saint Jerome's secretary or of a fictional character in a pretty boring book hardly anyone has read without compulsion and quickly forgotten like all things done under duress, like having sex with an uncle.

Article 133 is also there, not just to separate the irreligious from the religious, but to keep the divided religious apart from each other, instead of at each other's throats in either of their places of worship.

It is a wise law and it is a witless person who wants it repealed as a violation of the non-establishment clause for favoring one religion over another or no religion at all. Tomorrow an intelligent take on this incident. Keep well.