Pardoner's Tale: Pardoner Shmardoner

Out of all the tales we read I think this one is my favorite. Yes it is ironic and yes it is witty but what I loved the most about it is how it makes fun of religion by making a sort of black humor parody of a biblical story. From all the Bible stories I have read (two or maybe three… maybe) I get the sense that they all go in chronological order, in third person and they all have a message at the end. The story talks about three guys that try to trick each other and two of the end up dead from the use of gambling, drinking and swearing (ok, they don’t die from it but it’s part of irony). The Pardoner has already confessed that his only interest in preaching is money an that he sells fake relics by the time he start to tell the story and goes on to tell a PG 13 story with rather ambiguous ending.
The more-than-flawed character is a part of the mocking himself by being the complete opposite of the morally correct holy man we expect to see preaching for the love of God in church. The story then ends up being completely inappropriate contrasting from the typical characters like seeds and sheep and to add the cherry on top he ends it with a rather flawed message since the third guy did get the entire pile of gold in the end…
I don’t know what to think. The story is not a fairy tale but at the same time it does turn out to feel more real to the reader and less like an unrealistic romance.