I watched the video of Armenian and Eastern Orthodox priests beating each other with brooms in shock.
Priests attacking each other is bad enough, but in the Church of the Nativity, at Christmastime? It boggles the mind, yet I’ve seen another video of the same sort and know it has happened often.
Every priest or lay person I have talked to who returns from the Holy Land talks about the bitter divisions there between Christians. Msgr. Charles Pope elaborates on his own experiences there as well, which confirm the worst rumors.
These brawls are one shameful consequence of Christian disunity.
Christ prayed to our Father that:
Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one…that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
“…that the world may believe that you have sent me…”
What instead does the world see?
I had one friend tell me that the Armenian and Eastern Orthodox were more or less in communion with each other. From this video, it looks much more like “less” than “more.”
Such bitterness and enmity. Why? How can Christians do this to each other? It’s completely unacceptable. It doesn’t matter who started it, doesn’t matter who swept some dirt three inches beyond his partition of the church.
If Catholics have been involved in these disgraceful brawls, they would do better to relinquish their thirty square feet of space to one of these other Churches than commit such sins in the church of Christ’s birth. (I have heard great things, however, about the Franciscans of the Holy Land and their custody of various places.)
Non-Christians see these videos and laugh, shaking their heads in disbelief. It’s hard to imagine a more effective way to discredit ourselves.
Let us repudiate these actions whenever they happen and refuse to take part in Satan’s plan to prevent healing of the schisms from the Church. Christ prayed for us to be perfectly one and gives us the grace for it; He can heal the schisms, but He will not force us to do it; instead, He invites us to cooperate with Him to achieve reunion.
It is disgraceful, isn’t it?
You’d think Christians would have a little more self-control.
I guess this is living proof why our Lord had to come here (to this pride-soaked world) and die on a cross for us.
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Yes, it’s disgraceful. Just to clarify, however: Armenian and Eastern Orthodox are not in communion with each other. That doesn’t excuse what happened, however.
I had JUST sent a link of this clop to my fellow Pilgrims who had just come back from the Holy Land. We stood in that very hall, waiting in like to enter the cave of the Nativity.
As I told my spiritual director; the Holy Land is a composite of the profound and the profane.
Bethehem at the church of the Nativity, and Jerusalem at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre were both so beautiful, and so sad. Each sect/group with it’s little cordoned off sections. The saddest for me was being at 3:00 at the Holy Sepulchre at the Tomb of the Resurrection. Everything stops. Pilgrims standing in line get sheared off by cordons. Greek Monastics and Clerics at the front of the tomb, Copts at the back of the tomb, Assyrians at a side chapel a the side of the tomb all praying over eachother.
Instead of us all worshiping together in harmony, all you get is cacophony. And pilgrims like us gawking at it all in slack-jawed wonder.
PS, it was not just the professed religious whose actions were questionable, but the pilgrims too (myself included). What a terrible feeling it was to have to elbow and shove (and to BE elbowed and shoved) your fellow pilgrim to get a space before the holy places.
Jesus wept (Jn 11:35)
A few years ago, Franciscans and Orthodox priests got into a brawl with fisticuffs around Easter, of all people and date.
But, paraphrasing Chesterton, if it weren’t like this, with fallen men brawling with each other over it, Christianity wouldn’t be worthy. For it is a trace of fallen men to be passionate about what’s good; indeed, regretfully even wars were fought over Christianity. But in no way is it its fault, but of its followers, which remain sinful, though redeemed, yet short of its ideals.
Merry Christmas.
Well said.
Just an observation but starting at about :10 to about :30 one of the Priest has what looks to be an iPhone and at about :25 he is clearly using a camera ap. Also Fr Longenecker on his Standing on my Head blog has a very different take on this.
Keep in mind that the secular west is a lot more sterile than the rest of the world where people actually do attach some passion to their beliefs. As a reference point, look at the Nicene Council where Santa Claus (Saint Nicholas) punched Arius in the nose. Jerome and St Cyril of Jerusalem weren’t exactly models of PC either.
Passion is good, and combating heresy that is threatening to take over Christianity is good as well. But beating your fellow Christian because he swept some of “your dirt” is another thing.
BYOB?
Bring your own broom, yes!
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Here is what concerns me most, and I don’t think there is a valid excuse: Christians cannot have hatred in their heart for one another, especially other Christians, and especially Christians who are otherwise closely united. It is IMPOSSIBLE to eat the Ecuharist in good conscience – especially on the most sacred ground in all the world – with that kind of anger ready to go off any second. Those men are objectively in mortal sin, both for the anger and scandal, so they all must Confess – but Confession is only possible/valid if the anger is gone…but is it?
Now, this is easier said than done, but surely the “Peace that surpasses all understanding” should be possible for monks of that caliber, especially receiving the grace from the holy relics on holy ground.
Thus, I don’t accept the excuse that this is about being passionate. Sure there are individual moments of passion, but this is a sustained bitterness over many years. It ultimately shows the bankrupsy of lacking a Uniting Head like Peter who can command the flock to stop such bickering before it sends them to hell.
Part of me says the more Christian thing to do is to relinquish any areas of dispute – because such could possibly have the miraculous effect of converting the heart of the ‘opponent’. Think about it: God often works through the ways we consider least effective. The other half of me says that to relinquish such treasures is truly a betrayal and can have the effect of giving the ‘opponent’ credence in his own heart, solidifying his hardness. At the very least, they can cease the animosity, especially over the most scandalously trivial things like sweeping.