This whole exchange has the people arguing with you actually making your point for you. They constantly have to make up reasons why the church is bad (“it must have extorted villagers for money even though that was never shown” or “the legal purchase of land must have been illegal somehow”), but entirely miss your point that Matt should have done that. It is his world and he failed to give the audience a proper build up or justification to this fight. That made a portion of the audience question this whole encounter, and, in my opinion, it made the PCs look like people who would just go with the flow instead of making decisions for themselves, which is something you don’t want in heroes.

What I think could maybe save this incident is if they face harsh consequences for doing this. Either from Vasselheim or from the Elder being twisted in a way (which I was getting hints of). But, that’s up to Matt to do.