…we just run in circles here.

An English priest gets rid of his:

A priest from the Diocese of East Anglia, England, has decided to replace a live Nativity scene for a replica of the wall encircling Bethlehem in protest of the Israeli separation barrier.

Each year hundreds of people come to the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in St. Ives in Cambridgeshire to see the live sheep, a cow and donkey, and actors who occasionally have brought their newborn babies to play the role of Jesus for the Nativity scene.

But this year visitors will be staring up at an imposing gray replica of a portion of the wall built by the Israeli government in 2002 to keep Palestinian suicide bombers at bay.

Father Paul Maddison, the parish priest, made the decision to cancel because he wants to highlight the plight of the Palestinian people suffering as a result of the wall.

In place of the manger crib will be a grim assemblage, 24 feet high and 7 feet wide, of painted polystyrene stuffed with floor insulation materials. The wall will be flanked by protest banners and "stark photographs" to show how "desperate and ugly the situation is in the Holy Land," said a Dec. 11 statement by the priest.