Let 'em fight it out imo. Set up a little Thunder Dome action...two priests enter, one priest leaves. Winner gets to play in the church.
...and then they wonder why there are so many atheists. *Maybe they should all just get together and dance it out...there is a precedence for this sort of thing: [media]http://youtube.com/watch?v=qyQjiXSlU_w[/media]
There was a Doonesbury cartoon a year or so ago that applies here. There was a soldier in a Humvee with an Iraqi aide saying they needed to go in a capture a high value target at a safe house. The Iraqi says he must kill the guy to avenge a wrong done by his family to the aide's family. The US soldier says, "when?" The aide answers "1657!" and the final panel has the US officer saying, "What is wrong with you people!" If you find a picture of the "front" doior of the Church of the Holy Sepluchre and look closely at a ledge above the door, you will see a ladder leaning on the ledge against an upper story window. That ladder has been there over two hundred years because the guy who put it there didn't have the right and no one will touch it afterwards for fear of an argument. The relations in the shrines is a scandel. I visited there on a Sunday morning in 12/05 and witnessed the various groups praying at, not with each other. The grievances are old and continue to be pushed by their desperate situation there and in their home lands. Every time there are steps forward as by the Melchite ArchBishop of the Galilee, Elias Shacour, or Bishop Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land, some one pulls out a broom and whacks someone else! The only positive from all of this, and yes I am reaching here, is that when they fight it is with palm branches and brooms not kalisnakovs and suicide bombers. I pin my slim hopes there.
What I also don't get is how they were only briefly detained. They freaking attacked the cops. Anyone who's ever touched a palm frond knows that they're not soft. They can easily lacerate or knock out an eye. They should be in jail awaiting trial. It reminds me of something a friend of mine who's a border guard here told me a few weeks ago that there was a guy who was arrested and regulations require handcuffing with arms in front because handcuffing behind the back incurs too much hardship. While they were in the squad car on the way to jail, the prisoner lunged forward and tried to strangle the driver with the handcuffs. THEY LET HIM GO!!!! And no, to those who will start with the accusatory assumptions, the prisoner was an Arab, not a Jew.
This is the very reason I put no stock in organized religion. Going to different services and hearing if you aren't this or that you won't get to heaven, all the infighting , and for what. That is not God's way; not in my book.
If religion is all about you then your assessment makes sense. If it is about service to God and others............... For all the talk about how embaressing, stupid, hypocritical (fill in the blank) those groups were/are around the shrines also keep in mind that medical care in the West Bank for Palestinians is provided by only five hospitals, two Muslim and three Christian. Despite having fewer and fewer folk still living there, a Lutheran, a Catholic, and an Anglican hospital team with the two Islamic medical centers to provide high quality medical care to a people that are horribly underserved. That could not happen without people of faith here in the west providing offerings and support. That is a side of "organization" that is too often ignored.
