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Trivial spat with profound implications

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  • Trivial spat with profound implications

    South China Morning Post, HongKong
    January 2, 2012 Monday

    Trivial spat with profound implications

    by Bonny Schoonakker

    Bethlehem, which has entranced mankind for millennia, had a
    21st-century moment this week after an unseemly spat there made the
    news.

    As shown on television, men of the cloth came to blows at the Church
    of the Nativity, one of Christianity's most sacred sites. It was
    another bout in the turf war between the Greek and Armenian churches
    for the privilege of celebrating next Saturday's Orthodox Christmas on
    the actual site where, they believe, the God who made the universe
    became a human being.

    "It's a trivial problem," a police officer told the BBC, referring to
    bearded men belabouring each other with broomsticks.

    You can understand why he would say that, in a notoriously
    disputatious part of the world. The phrase "fighting in Palestine"
    brings rocks, missiles, tanks and suicide bombs to mind, not priests
    imitating football hooligans.

    However, the only reason this year's rumble made the news was because
    someone had the presence of mind to record the incident on video. Had
    the fight been recorded only in words, in a news agency report, for
    example, it is doubtful it would have made more than a digest buried
    among the acres of wire copy on the world pages.

    The dispute between the Greek and Armenian Orthodox churches goes
    right back to the origins of Christianity, with the Armenians, also
    known as the Gregorian church, claiming to be the first Christians,
    from the first century AD. The rest of us are apostates, heretics or
    worse, the way they see it, so the fight over the place where Jesus
    was born has profound implications, if you have the time to consider
    them.

    However, the BBC denoted its view of the significance of the incident
    by broadcasting its report in the "and now for something completely
    different" slot. The only news item whose triviality exceeded the
    fighting over the Nativity in Bethlehem was one from Australia, about
    a crocodile that had attacked a zookeeper's lawnmower.

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