17 minute read
EDITORIAL
UP FRONT
TRÍONA DOHERTY
LET’S TALK
Two videos caught my attention recently. The first was a sketch from Irish comedy trio Foil Arms and Hog, entitled ‘Post Pandemic Traumatic Stress’. A teacher, sometime in the future, is teaching his class ‘early 21st century history’. After a recap of the main events of 2019, he announces “Right, today we’re going to move on to 2022.” “Eh Sir? You skipped 2020 and 2021,” pipes up a student. “Get out. Out now!” barks the teacher. Turning back to the class, he intones “All together now: it goes 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023…”
The second was the Disney film Encanto. The story centres around the Madrigal family who, after a terrible tragedy, rebuild their lives and share their various gifts with the wider community. The familia is not without its dark side, however. Bruno, the estranged son of the matriarch Abuela, was banished from the family home after his own gift proved problematic. The film has an important message about the effects of trauma. When issues are ignored or glossed over, the damage and division can last for generations. Encanto’s biggest musical number is the catchy ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’.
Having watched both productions within a couple of days of each other, I couldn’t help but hum a hybrid version to myself: ‘We don’t talk about Covid’. This March marks two years since COVID-19, coronavirus, lockdown, PCR and countless other terms forced their way into our vocabulary and our lives. Here in Ireland, shortly before the two-year mark, the announcement came that the majority of restrictions were being lifted. My immediate reaction, after giddily contemplating future visits and occasions, was “Thank God. Maybe now we won’t have to talk about Covid anymore.”
I know I’m not the only one who’s exhausted. The losses, the isolation, the restrictions and the anxiety-inducing news cycle have taken their toll on all of us. It’s understandable that we might not want to talk about Covid anymore, at least for another few years – if ever!
But one has to wonder how we will look back at the years 2020 and 2021. Will they be swept under the carpet, dismissed as ‘lost’ years in an attempt to move on and ‘get back to normal’? Will the scars we carry, however painful, heal in time? On an individual level, many people will need support as they step out into the post-pandemic world.
Our society, too, will bear the scars. In the western world, before the arrival of COVID-19, divisions were already pronounced. The climate crisis, political elections, social movements such as Black Lives Matter, the recent referenda facing Irish voters – all these issues polarised opinion, giving rise to aggression and in some cases even violence. The pandemic brought new divisions as people rushed to take a stance on everything from vaccines to the remit of government and individual rights and responsibilities.
In our personal lives, when we are too tired or anxious to have the hard conversations, we find ways of papering over the cracks. We might add Covid to religion and politics as off-limit topics for dinner parties or family gatherings, but of course the chasms between us only widen if we don’t at least try to understand each other.
As a society, there are questions we need to ask ourselves. What have we learned in the past two years about who we are and what we value? What are our responsibilities towards others, particularly the most vulnerable members of society?
Our church is asking these questions too. We don’t know yet what the post-pandemic church will look like. It’s being shaped right now in our families, parishes and dioceses as we emerge from the strange chapter of online liturgies and socially distanced congregations. The synodal journey announced by Pope Francis couldn’t have come at a better time. The Irish Church has begun its own Synodal Pathway, asking the question: What does God want from the church in Ireland at this time?
Real consultation and listening must shape these processes. The difficult, awkward conversations are vital, including with those ‘on the fringes’ of the church, those who have moved away from the sacraments, those who have been hurt by the church and those who feel excluded. We cannot fall into the trap of ‘not talking about’ certain issues or acting as if they don’t exist; this will only cause harm in the long run.
The church is at a turning point, and there may be some false starts and missed opportunities. But my hope is that, when we look back on this time, we will see it as a new beginning when we read the ‘signs of the times’. I’m conscious, as I step into the role of editor of Reality, that we are part of this process.
It remains to be seen how the history books will judge this ‘early 21st century history’. But being at a turning point means there is hope, and that healing and change are possible.
SAINT PATRICK
THE MYTHS, THE LEGENDS AND HIS RELEVANCE TODAY
WITH ST PATRICK’S DAY FESTIVITIES EXPECTED TO RETURN TO FORM THIS YEAR, WHAT DO WE REALLY KNOW ABOUT THE ‘APOSTLE OF IRELAND’? CAN WE SEPARATE THE MAN FROM THE MYTH AND DISCOVER A NEW RELEVANCE FOR IRELAND TODAY?
BY PATRICK COMERFORD
The promise of an extra public holiday next year to celebrate the life of Saint Brigid not only brings some balance to the celebrations of Saint Patrick, but also offers an opportunity to ask who St Patrick is for us today and to reflect on his significance. Is it possible to separate the saint from both popular celebrations and popular mythology, and to ask whether his mission to Ireland was unique and what his place is in Irish church history?
During the extended St Patrick’s Day festivities this year there will be little, if any, mention of St Patrick, his spiritual message or the unique experience of Christianity in Ireland and the church in the centuries afterwards. With the lifting of pandemic restrictions, most of the fun will be at parades and festivals rather than in churches and cathedrals. It seems inevitable that we are going to be inundated with reports of public buildings and monuments around the world floodlit with fluorescent green.
In Ireland, Easter is often hijacked by the 1916 anniversary, St Patrick’s Day is hijacked by parades and pints, and Celtic spirituality is relegated to the ‘New Age Spirituality’ shelves in our bookshops or the glossy souvenirs in Dublin Airport’s duty-free ‘shopping experience’. But what do we actually know about St Patrick, his life, his teaching, his writings and his spirituality?
EARLY CHRISTIANITY IN IRELAND
Traditionally and romantically, St Patrick is said to have converted the entire population of Ireland from paganism in a very short period between 432 and 461, less than the span of one generation. These dates are of significance in the history of the wider church: St Augustine died in 430, the Council
Croagh Patrick, in County Mayo
of Ephesus met in 431 and the Council of Chalcedon met in 451.
Putting aside myth and romance, it is important to recognise that there were Christians in Ireland before St Patrick arrived and that Irish mythology was anxious to claim Irish connections with the Christian story long before Patrick. These include the stories of Altus, said to have been an Irish witness to the Passion and death of Christ; Conor Mac Nessa, King of Ireland, who died of a broken heart when he heard of Christ’s crucifixion; Cormac Mac Airt, who converted to Christianity in the third century; and Mansuetus, said to have been an Irish bishop in 4th-century France.
But there is a realistic medium between these legends and the concept of a sudden conversion to Christianity at the hands of a single missionary. Tacitus (ca 55-120 AD) tells us that British or Gallic merchants had a reasonably good knowledge of Ireland’s ‘harbours and approaches’. The ‘Celtic’ people in Ireland were traders, raiders and plunderers, and there is evidence of Roman traders reaching Irish harbours and beyond
The ‘Celtic’ people in Ireland were traders, raiders and plunderers, and there is evidence of Roman traders reaching Irish harbours and beyond them up rivers such as the Nore and the Barrow, trading in wine, oil and wheat.
them up rivers such as the Nore and the Barrow, trading in wine, oil and wheat. The Irish imported pottery, metalwork and brica-brac from Roman Gaul and Britain, and exported copper, gold, slaves, hides, cattle and wolfhounds.
By the end of the 3rd century, people from Ireland were establishing colonies in Wales, Cornwall and Scotland. By the 3rd or 4th century, there was regular commercial, mercantile and social contact with Roman communities in Britain and Gaul. There have been abundant finds of looted Roman coins all along the north and east coasts of Ireland, and Roman silver ingots with similar Christian provenance have been found in Kent and Limerick. Catherine Swift argues convincingly that many among the ruling class in Ireland adopted the cultural habits and social customs of Roman Britons. What is now Cathedral Hill in Armagh is an example of one of their temple sites.
Christianity probably arrived in Ireland in the 4th and early 5th centuries by a slow and gradual process from Britain and Continental Europe, probably from Gaul and what we now know as Germany, and perhaps even from the Iberian peninsula, including present-day Spain and Portugal.
Niall of the Nine Hostages commanded several raiding expeditions across the Irish Sea. British captives carried off by Irish raiders may have been yet another way of Christianity coming to have a presence on this island. Some educated continental Christians may also have sought refuge in Ireland during the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire at the start of the 4th century, bringing their Christianity with them.
Other points of contact include the contacts made by the Irish migrants in Britain and trade links with Roman Britain, Gaul and Spain. A gravestone for a 5th-century Irish Christian has been found in a Christian cemetery in Trier, and 5th-century Christians, some with Latin names, are commemorated on ogham stones in in Carlow, Waterford, Cork and Kerry.
In other words, many factors indicate the arrival of Christianity in Ireland long before Patrick was captured as a slave, and there was a considerable Christian presence on this island before Patrick began his mission in 432.
PATRICK’S LIFE AND MISSION
The traditional account of the life of St Patrick says he was born about 372 in Roman Britain in Bannavem Taburniae, perhaps in Cumbria or at a Roman outpost at Dumbarton in
Photo: Patrick Comerford
St Patrick seen in a window in St Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge, Dublin
Scotland. He says his father, Calpornius, was a deacon and his grandfather, Potitus, was a priest; both were from a relatively prosperous class of Romans.
At the age of 16, the young Patrick was captured in a great raid along with “many thousands of people” [Confessio 1]. According to his own account, some of them were lukewarm Christians, and some could also have been committed Christians, perhaps even priests. His account of his escape from slavery at the age of 22 may be evidence of an escape network for fugitive slaves run by concerned Christians, more than 20 years before Patrick began his own mission [Confessio 17 and 18].
After his escape, Patrick had visions in which he heard the cry of the people in Ireland pleading to him to come back. It is an image that may have drawn on St Paul’s vision in Troy of a man calling him across the sea to Macedonia (see Acts 16:9-10). Most of the details we have of St Patrick’s life are from his Confessio, written in reply to the attacks on his character brought against him in England, and from his Letter to Coroticus.
Patrick arrived back in Ireland from Britain around 432. According to JB Bury, he landed in Wicklow, at the mouth of the River Vartry. Traditions associate his early mission with the islands off the Skerries coast, Co. Dublin, and Saul, Co. Down. But there are traditions too of Irish saints who preceded St Patrick: St Ciaran of Seir Kieran, Co. Offaly; St Ibar or Iberius of Begerin, Co. Wexford; his nephew, St Abban of Adamstown, Co. Wexford; St Declan of Ardmore, Co. Waterford; St Declan’s friend, St Ailbe of Emly, Co. Tipperary; St Meltioc or Multose of Kinsale, Co. Cork, and so on.
Most of these saints are associated with the south and the south-east. Although there is no primary evidence to support these largely unreliable traditions, they underpin a truth that Christianity was in Ireland for generations before St Patrick arrived and that he was not the first person to bring Christianity to Ireland.
The background to St Patrick’s mission includes the presence of perhaps three heresies in Ireland – Arianism, Priscillianism and Pelagianism. Palladius was ordained by Pope Celestine, perhaps in 431, and was sent as the ‘first bishop’ on a mission to “the Scotti [Irish] who believe in Christ”. So, from at least the third decade of the 5th century, Irish Christians were numerically large enough to
Statue of St Patrick on the Hill of Tara
have a bishop sent from Rome, and Palladius is associated with several church sites in Leinster. His work was continued, perhaps, by figures such as Secundinus, Auxilius and Iserninus. His mission activities and those of Patrick may have been confused in later writings, so that much of the work and success of Palladius was attributed wrongly to Patrick.
The late Professor Patrick Corish of Maynooth, in The Irish Catholic Experience (1985), links the mission of Palladius in Leinster with, perhaps, three churches in Co. Wicklow. The circular letter known as The First Synod of Saint Patrick seems to provide evidence of a second-generation missionary church in Leinster, and this stream of Christianity in Ireland has been associated with the church in Kildare.
By the time Patrick began his mission, the foundations had been laid for a church in Ireland that in the centuries that followed became a vibrant missionary church. But, while the missions of Palladius and Patrick may have overlapped, Patrick does not refer to Palladius. Patrick was working in fresh territory, while Roman missionaries in Leinster were consolidating the work of Palladius and others who, by 431, had ensured that there were many people in Ireland who were Christians.
PATRICK’S WRITINGS
Two Latin works survive that are generally accepted to have been written by St Patrick. These are the Declaration or Confession (Confessio), and the Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus (Epistola), from which we have the only generally accepted details of his life.
In his Confessio [51], Patrick shows he is aware of episcopal activity in other parts of Ireland, including baptisms, confirmations and ordinations. But he says he travelled to places in Ireland “where no one else had ever penetrated, in order to baptise, or to ordain clergy, or to confirm the people” – suggesting there were places that had received episcopal ministry from other, earlier sources.
The dates of Patrick’s life are the subject of conflicting traditions. His own writings provide nothing that can be dated more precisely than the 5th century. Although Patrick’s writings quote from the Acts of the Apostles as they are rendered by the early 5th-century Bible translation known as the Vulgate, these quotations may have been added later to replace other quotation from an earlier Bible version and can therefore not be used securely to fix dates for St Patrick or his writings. For example, the Letter to Coroticus implies that the Franks were still pagans at the time of writing. Their conversion to Christianity is dated to the period 496-508.
In his writings, Patrick makes no references to the shamrock or snakes being driven out of Ireland, nor does he name the mountain where he tended animals as a slave. St Patrick did not teach about the Trinity using the shamrock. If he did use the shamrock, he was perilously close to the heresies of either tritheism, at one extreme, or modalism at the other.
The banning of snakes from Ireland is not mentioned by St Patrick in his own writings and does not appear in the stories about him until the 11th century. But, in the building of the nation myths, St Patrick was seen to require a legend parallel to St George slaying the dragon or St Marcel delivering Paris from the monster.
The Hill of Slemish and Croagh Patrick are not named, and Lough Derg is not mentioned
(Photo: Patrick Comerford)
Seamus Murphy’s sculpture of the saint in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Co. Kildare
(Photo: Patrick Comerford)
A stained-glass window in St Edan’s Cathedral, Ferns, Co. Wexford
(Photo: Patrick Comerford)
St Patrick with mitre, crozier, Bible and shamrock at the chapel in St Patrick’s College, Maynooth
either. Nor is there any allusion to the Paschal Fire on the Hill of Tara near Slane, Co. Meath. There is no reference to King Laoghaire either, nor to the baptism of his daughters.
All these elements in popular stories about St Patrick come from later writing and traditions. Over time, the cult and status of St Patrick took on such proportions that we depend less on historical narrative and more on hagiography for these folk tales and legends.
I could go on… St Patrick did not wear a mitre and green liturgical robes – certainly not in Lent – he probably never carried a crozier, he did not turn the people of Skerries into goats, he did not fetch water from a well in Nassau Street, Dublin, and he certainly did not build St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin – nor, for that matter, any St Patrick’s Cathedral.
There is a theory that there were two Patricks, although this may arise from a misreading of ‘the elder Patrick’, who died in 457, where elder might also be read as bishop or priest. Neither the canons attributed to him nor the Breastplate of Saint Patrick is his work. Later 7th-century documents speak of Patrick as the successor of Palladius. However, the O’Neill dynasty had Tireachan and Muirchu write spurious accounts of Patrick’s life to establish Armagh’s claims to primacy in Ireland.
When Brian Ború became High King ca 1000 AD, he had his secretary write into the Book of Armagh a confirmation of the right of Armagh to all church revenues in Ireland. It was at least another century, however, before Armagh’s claims to primacy were recognised throughout the Irish church.
ST PATRICK’S RELEVANCE TODAY
Our images of Celtic spirituality are often shaped by Victorian romanticism. Saint Patrick’s Breastplate, as we know it, is based on a manuscript from the late 11th century now in the library of Trinity College Dublin. But it was only published in 1897 by John Henry Bernard (1860-1927), later Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin (1915-1919) and Provost of Trinity College (1919-1927).
Sometimes, our images of Celtic Spirituality are intricately linked with the nation-statebuilding myths created by an Irish nationalism that was often narrow in its vision. But when we consider the long run of Christian history over 2,000 years, St Patrick’s Day is a reasonably late innovation, dating from the 17th century, and has only been a public holiday since 1903. Indeed, the first St Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin was not held until 1931.
St Patrick’s Day is a good day for parades and parties, for trying to show each other we have a cúpla focal, for singing a few hymns and songs in Irish, and for breaking our Lenten fasts and forgetting our Lenten resolutions.
But St Patrick is more relevant to Irish identity today, and too important to be relegated to the revelries of a long bank holiday weekend.
St Patrick was a unifying force for the varying strands of Christianity in Ireland. So often, every one of the churches in Ireland is so insecure in its identity that we tend to cling to the little things that make us different, instead of rejoicing in the truly important things that we have in common. However, St Patrick is a shared figure in our ecumenical endeavours, celebrated not only by all church traditions but even revered among Muslims as a pre-Islamic holy figure. He stands too as a reminder of the benefits of welcoming immigrants, challenging exploitation and celebrating our centuriesold links with our neighbours in Britain and across Europe.
