A flat out brawl erupted in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.  Who was involved, you may ask.  Hoodlums? Nope.  Gang members?  Nah.  Soldiers?  Wrongo.  It was two groups of priests actually.

“The brawl apparently began when Greek Orthodox priests set up ladders to clean the walls and ceilings of their part of the church after the Christmas Day celebrations.  Armenian priests claimed that the ladders encroached on their portion of the church, which led the two sects to exchange angry words which quickly turned to blows.”

Now, I’m not an expert on religion, but I’m thinking that this is not exactly how priests should be behaving.  It took a dozen policemen to break up the brawl.  It was quite the holy racket, apparently.

I’m having a hard time picturing this going down, actually.  Was there two lines of priests facing off, doing the West Side Story thing, snapping their fingers?  Or was it an Outsiders-style gang fight?  Did they use those smoking yo-yos as weapons?  That could look pretty cool.  What kind of gang signs would they use?   Maybe they had a gang name for themselves even.  Maybe Heaven’s Devils?  That has a nice ring to it.

No wonder the world is exploding with religious intolerance when priests of (almost) the same religion can’t even get along.