Daily View: How should the church treat protesters?
As protesters are expected to be asked to pack up their tents outside St Paul’s Cathedral and a third clergyman resigns, commentators ask how the church leaders should have reacted to the protesters outside the cathedral.
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that as the Dean's resignation yesterday is an all-too-rare illustration of the religious establishment acting for social justice:
"Long before this protest, the cathedral had become the Harrods of the spiritual world, greeting visitors with the peal of cash registers. Blessed are the poor? Not when God demands £14.50 a ticket (£13.50 for students and seniors).
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"Naturally, churches must make ends meet, but St Paul's does not appear to be on the breadline, with a charitable foundation and a City of London endowment trust showing millions of pounds in assets. Whereas visitors to other European cathedrals pay nothing, Britain's leading churches have ordained the Disneyfication of God. Even if charging and slick marketing are unavoidable, the pusillanimous behaviour of senior clergy suggests that the God industry has taken precedence over the voiceless and the vulnerable."
But the , saying churchmen were not responsible for the gathering and they are not responsible for the ending either:
"The demonstrators should reflect upon the damage their presence is now doing to innocent people and their families, and to an institution that promotes moral behaviour as an alternative to greed and selfishness. St Paul's was not their target, but it is now their victim."
may come too late for St Paul's:
"There's no tidy way out of this, but there is a wrong one, which is to continue digging the grave Knowles had with such effort prepared for the Church of England's reputation. The bishop will have to defy his own lawyers and negotiate a peaceful settlement with the protesters. Since he must do this, he had best do it at once. To wait for a week and then change his mind would be nearly as disastrous as settling for expulsion."
what the protesters could do to give the church a real dilemma - hold a prayer group:
"Presumably, St Paul's Cathedral is in favour of prayer. This is what makes the coalition of left-wing Christian groups, threatening to hold a prayer vigil in the protest tents if authorities attempt to confiscate the tents so critical to how the protest plays out.
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"The sight of people being roughed up while praying will be giving the cathedral clergy nightmares. However, the temporal authorities of the City of London and the Chapter of the church may be so divorced from a sense of how public opinion works that they may plough on regardless. At the moment this appears to be the protesters' only trump card. They need to think more quickly to strengthen their hand."
St Paul's has inadvertently helped Occupy London's position:
"Writers, pundits and politicians have all spoken out against St. Paul's actions and consequently, even if only by default, they've lent support to the protest. One of the motivating ideas behind the Occupy movement is that the protesters make up the '99 %,' and therefore have the democratic power to change the system. By first aligning themselves with the '1%'- by, among other things, allying with city officials who are keen to evict the protesters - only to more or less implode under public backlash, St. Paul's has only confirmed the protesters' theory.
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"All things considered, this doesn't bode well for the Occupy movement's real target: the financial system."
