St. Patrick, intercede for us!

 Amici,

Take a moment to view this great painting by Jim Fitzpatrick of St. Patrick. THAT's a saint to drive out the snakes in the Church today.

Fitzpatrick writes:

Originally commissioned by a US company and never used; they considered it a little too wild but I enjoyed creating this different and more imaginative portrait of our national saint. Patrick was no slouch and rebelled against the rigid authority of Rome and allowed the Irish to keep their religious beliefs while incorporating Christianity into their ancient belief system. From then onwards Irish missionaries carried the gospels to Europe and converted many of the most barbarous and powerful tribes to Christianity.

This is basically true but not quite, as so much of what is Irish. St. Patrick went to Ireland without the approval of the British bishops, and he may have not even be ordained a priest, let alone a bishop. He had no authority or power except what God gave him; from his own writings (i.e. two documents, his Confession and his Letter to Coroticus, which contain the only certain information we have for the saint) he mentions no troubles with the druids, although he does write that he was enslaved a few more times. In fact, he was sort of forgotten in the century after his death, being rediscovered and rehabilitated by the Armagh clergy when they found his two surviving writings in an attic or somewhere, which they broadcast to assert Armagh's claim to be the Primatial See of all Ireland.

St. Patrick must have managed his mission quite well because pagan Ireland produced no martyrs. In fact, in the next generation, there's the great tale of St. Brigid herself, who had a "Life" like few saints can be said to have had. Bríd was the daughter of a king, and was fostered by a druid! She never had troubles with him or any druid (the draoí saved her from her father, by the way, when the latter was going to kill her). In some manner we won't know in this mortal life, she became (apparently) head of a major pagan shrine to the great Celtic goddess Brigit that she turned into a Christian shrine: Killdare. (A dual monastery run by the Abbess and the site of a sacred flame from pagan times that the English extinguished.) 

Then in the next generation after Naomh Bríd, St. Colm Cille (521-597), THE major Irish saint of those centuries, actually saved the druids from extinction, arguing for their preservation at the Convention of Druim Ceat around 573 or so, A.D. The result was what author John Minahane calls "Christian Druids" in his important 2006 book: The Christian Druids: On the Filid or Philosopher-poets of Ireland.

In short, St. Patrick and St. Brigid and St. Colm Cille were powerful, God-filled saints who lived truly heroic lives, and certainly stood up to the Church bureaucracy of their times. They'd certainly be kicking Bergoglio to the curb. They have thrown the current Irish Church into the sea. (Another meaning to this great painting!) And if you know anything about the incredible St. Columbanus (540-615), a younger contemporary of St. Colm Cille, you'd be praying to him to rid us of our troubles in Rome. (He had stood up to a pope in his day; but whole tale is a long story, indeed. He didn't condemn that pope, but certainly stood his ground; we need even one Columbanus today, alas. Would that we had one!)

Anyway, St. Patrick, oh so heroic a saint, intercede for us.

An Préachán