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Poor old St. Patrick, how bewildered he must
be by the concentration, after sixteen hundred years by Irish
people here and everywhere else, on who he was, where he came
from and what he did for Ireland, The literature on his life,
and his missionary work on this island, is voluminous, hugely
greater than the tiny amount he wrote about himself, and his
exploits as teacher, preacher and leader in early Irish Christianity.
The published works on Patrick are not just biographies or
added history of his times and of the state of the Christian
faith in fifth century Ireland. They are often the interpretations
and imaginations of authors who use the saint to trace back
their religious and cultural heritage to him. The attempt
to make Patrick the pivotal figure to unite Irishmen in faith
and life was doomed to fail when claims made him, for many
people, the property of the Roman Catholic Church and Irish
nationalism. The few facts we have about Patrick give no justification
for such claims. Patrick predated Roman Catholicism in Ireland
by several centuries and an Ireland of one political philosophy
in a country divided into clans often warring with one another,
was a nonsense. The Ireland to which Patrick returned as a
missionary was not without a Christian presence. There were
Christians in Ireland before Patrick though through him the
Celtic Church grew so amazingly that his contribution can
not be minimised. And the Celtic Church was self governing,
self sufficient, free from the domination or interference
of any other church. The genuine writings of St. Patrick are
the confession and the letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus,
both in Latin and the nvmn, the Lorica or Breastplate in ancient
Irish. There are also five savings in the Book of Armagh.
Dr. Newport White in a little sixpenny booklet published in
1932 the only documents that have survived from the British
Isles in the century after the fall of Rome. The one striking
feature in the writings of Patrick is the frequency of quotations
from the Bible. He tells us that he was captured as a boy
somewhere in Britain and was made a place for an Irish chieftain
at Slemish, Co. Antrim; that after six years he escaped and
was reunited with his Christian family. He lived as one with
them for twenty years. But never having forgotten his experiences
in Ireland and the people there he was determined to return
to win them for Christ. He studied in Gaul (France) and was
ordained and later consecrated a bishop by Germanus Bishop
of Auxerre. There is nothing to suggest that he had any contact
with the Bishop of Rome or was influenced in his decision
to return to Ireland by the Roman Church. The Roman Catholic
influence in England began with St. Augustine in 597. It did
not reach Ireland until the twelfth century when a king and
a Pope brought the Irish Church under the authority and discipline
of the Roman Catholic Church. Bishop William Shaw Kerr in
his "The Independence of the Celtic church in Ireland"
describes the place and status of that church in the Christian
world of that time. He was one of several writers who sought
to tell the story of Patrick and his Celtic church truthfully
and without embellishments. Among them were Newport White,
J.W. Camier, J.E. L. Oulton. they made a case for their own
Church of Ireland bas being the continuing church of St. Patrick
from its Celtic origins through Romanisation fables, fiction
and myths, and by allowing Patrick to speak for himself they
give us a profile of the man free from the distortions of
some who sought to make Patrick one of them for their own
purposes. The "greening" of Patrick on St. Patrick's
Day is to use the man and the day for purposes alien to the
attitudes and practices of someone who was totally committed
to Christ and the growth of the Christian Church. The celebrations
of the day are so unrelated to Patrick that they make March
17 one for fun and games, dressing up and partying, parading
and drinking what is ordinarily black but made green for the
occasion. Everything is green and everybody Irish, especially
in New York on that special day. There can be no objection
to people enjoying themselves. The complaint about the celebrations
is that they are made into an Irish Roman Catholic and nationalist/republican
expression of identity and with a triumphalism which claims
a special relationship with Patrick that can not be historically
sustained. Those who denominationalise and politicise Patrick
belittle the man and limit his influence which was inclusive
and not exclusive of people who were all in need of the gospel
he preached. Those who claim that Patrick gave Ireland the
Christian gospel, that no more or less, are in their recognition
of him expressing an indebtedness which is well-founded in
the life and teaching of a man with whom they share a common
faith. It is the perennial problem that a day which could
be used to unite Christians is the one which highlights the
divisions among them. Bolton C. Waller said this: "Those
Irish men and women will best prove themselves the spiritual
sons and daughters of Patrick, who have his utter faith in
God, his love for Christ, the same zeal, energy and courage
in the work for the extension of Christ's Kingdom in Ireland
and throughout the world, and who give themselves with equal
devotion to the task to which God calls each of them."
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