xmlns:c="file:/dev/null"
	xmlns:d="file:/dev/null"
	xmlns:q="file:/dev/null"
	xmlns:t="file:/dev/null">

what's the point of having four prefixes for the same namespace?
c:priority and d:priority  are the same element to a namespace aware
processor, so both would match an xpath expression "q:priority"
It would be clearer if you used the same prefix for all, or different
namespaces. 


<c:priority VH="VERYHIGH/"/>
<c:priority H="HIGH/"/>
<c:priority M="MEDIUM/"/>
<c:priority L="LOW/"/>
<c:priority VL="VERYLOW/"/>



to get the highest priority of any paragraph in the source document
assuming use is something like <para priority="M">...</para>
you could go as follows

document

<a>

<para priority="M"/>
<para priority="H"/>

</a>


stylesheet


<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
                version="1.0"
          	xmlns:c="file:/dev/null"
      >

<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>


<c:priority VH="VERYHIGH/"/>
<c:priority H="HIGH/"/>
<c:priority M="MEDIUM/"/>
<c:priority L="LOW/"/>
<c:priority VL="VERYLOW/"/>


<xsl:variable name="root" select="/"/>

<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:for-each select="document('')/xsl:stylesheet/c:priority/@*
                     [name(.)=$root//*/@priority]         ">
  <xsl:if test="position()=last()">
    <xsl:value-of select="."/>
  </xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>


</xsl:stylesheet>



output


MEDIUM



David


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list