Sorry Dave - missed you again.
"The authorities need to intervene as well as the church"
What happened in Woolwich was a crime and as such, has to be dealt with by the law.
Should Woolwich suddenly become involved in a holy war, certainly, the church becomes involved, but despite claims to the contrary, this in not the case, it is a murder carried out by a tiny handful of people from a population of one and a half million (a point that you, along with Keith, continue to ignore) - does any church anywhere excommunicate everybody guilty of a serious crime?
Your comparison with the IRA is facile in the extreme.
The local Muslim leaders where among the first on the scene to express their abhorrence at what had happened in Woolwich, one cleric described it as "an insult to Islam" to make the claims that the killers did.
It seems to me that nothing short of a signed confession of guilt would satisfy some people.
BTW - the same church that used the excommunication card during the 'troubles' is now threatening to excommunicate those politicians who 'vote the wrong way' in the forthcoming vote on pregnancy termination.
As far as I'm concerned, the sooner the church, any church, is totally barred as an organisation from having any influence on national (particularly political) matters whatever, the cleaner will be the air we breathe.
Jim Carroll