Most likely they want to take the saintess and one up the church
No benefit whatsoever. They just want to sabotage the church because they don't like them. In short, yes, they're just being an a-hole
Well..the archmage guy is just bonkers, he doesn't care about politics and only wanted to have one over the church, by sabotaging them..and kidnapping allie(not actually possible tho). And the magic republic has always been on odds with the church anyways so they were gonna dump all these actions as the crazy antics of a mad archmage. Archmages, aura masters and saints are basically same rank. The greatest of human capability. So they are like, usually over the law.
Is there some benefit to them trying to sabotage everything? Or are they all just being assholes for the sake of it?