Hmm, part of me feels like I should defend Marie and those six here. The temple staff did try to kill her, and I don't think there's a way to really tell if that's an isolated incident or a church-planned assassination. Combine that with giant robots right at their doorstep, I think it's hard to fully blame them to at least prepare something.
I was expecting at least a punch for the kneeling scene though.
It's probably the mangaka or author. Like you said, we're discussing pretty big event that happened offscreen and just got tons of exposition of it, so the pacing feels kinda off.