Northern Ireland's churches may be burning, but the mounting confrontation over a banned march is unlikely to wreck the region's peace agreement. Even as Unionist and Republican leaders this week transformed their traditional battle from a paramilitary into a parliamentary one, Unionist extremists began torching Catholic churches and Republican militants responded in kind. The escalating violence follows a British-appointed commission's ruling forbidding Unionist militants from marching through a predominantly Catholic neighborhood in Portadown. The Unionists have vowed to defy the prohibition on the annual ritual that has provoked rioting for the past three years.