The Great St. Patrick Was Once an Atheist

From The National Catholic Register-

I can hear the howls of outrage. But before you grab torches and pitchforks and head over to my house, give me a moment. Obviously, Patrick was not an atheist when he began his world-changing missionary work. Yet by his own admission, there was a time in his life when his likelihood of ever being venerated as a saint was nil.

In 401, the great St. Augustine of Hippo wrote the Western world’s first autobiography, his Confessions. A few decades later St. Patrick followed suit, although, sadly, Patrick’s Confession is not nearly as detailed as Augustine’s. Nonetheless, it is full of interesting information about Patrick’s family, his youth, and a near-apostolate-destroying scandal that turned his fellow bishops against him.

Patrick tells us he was born in a Roman settlement called Bannavern Taburniae on the British side of the Irish Sea. More than that we do not know—archaeologists have never found the site. Patrick’s mother, Concessa, and his father, Calpornius, were devout Christians who brought their son up in the faith and taught him the Scriptures. Calpornius was a deacon; his father, Potitus, had been a priest. In spite of his parents’ best efforts, Christianity made no discernible impact on Patrick. Late in life when he wrote his Confession he recalled his youth and admitted candidly, “I did not believe in the living God.”

More here-

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/tcraughwell/the-great-st.-patrick-was-once-an-atheist

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby delivers St Patrick's Day message of hope

From Belfast-

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has delivered a powerful message of hope and reconciliation to the people of Northern Ireland as he took part in the St Patrick's Day celebrations in Downpatrick.

Speaking during a service at Down Cathedral, the leader of world Anglicanism said: "You have embarked with enormous courage on the long road to reconciliation and you are the symbol of hope for so many around the world. Don't give up. Make it work.

"It is a gift of God to you for the world.

"It is held in your hands as a treasure.

"It is something that comes from the peace of God."

More here-

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/archbishop-of-canterbury-justin-welby-delivers-st-patricks-day-message-of-hope-31075248.html

Like St Patrick, Dr Welby is a leader with great vision

From Belfast-


The participation by the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Justin Welby in next Tuesday's St Patrick's Day celebrations in Saul and Downpatrick will provide a higher than usual profile for these annual ceremonies in honour of our patron saint.

It is not often that a Church figure such as the Archbishop of Canterbury comes to Northern Ireland, and this will be Dr Welby's second visit in just a few months - which must be something of an ecclesiastical record.

He will preach in Down Cathedral and lay a wreath at St Patrick's grave near the church, though some historians are not sure that this site is authentic. However, why let facts spoil a good story in this part of the world where symbolism is so potent.

More here-

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/like-st-patrick-dr-welby-is-a-leader-with-great-vision-31064780.html

Who Was St. Patrick?

From Huffington-

So, who is St. Patrick, anyway, and why do we like him so much?

Well, first, who he is not: he is not the benign figure wearing a green bishop's miter holding a shamrock and casting the snakes from the shores of his homeland, the Emerald Isle, even as he brought the saving message of Christianity to Irish pagans.

The saint we know as Patrick lived, most probably, in the mid fifth century Anno Domini, at a time before Roman Catholic bishops wore miters. Although he preached the Christian doctrine of the Trinity (that God is manifest in three persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), using a shamrock to illustrate the teaching is a later attribution to him. There were no snakes in Ireland, as testified by Roman writers well before Patrick's time. And Ireland was not his native land; rather, Patrick was a Roman Briton who first came to Ireland as a slave, then returned as a missionary, yes to convert the heathens on the wild island, but also to organize the Christians who were already there into a coherent church structure.

In fact, Patrick was an angry son of a gun, uneducated despite his noble lineage, totally insecure, with few friends and legions of enemies within the British church that dispatched him to Hibernia in the first place (after much lobbying by him)--and accused of malfeasance by those same enemies who moved to have him removed from his ministry and position of authority. He was, for all that, a remarkable communicator (think Billy Graham for a modern comparison), brave in the face of very real dangers, indefatigable, stubborn in his embrace of the true faith, generous to a fault, a mystic and a man of deep humility and constant prayer.

More here-

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-tobin/who-was-st-patrick_b_2890154.html

St. Patrick

Apostle of Ireland, born at Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton, in Scotland, in the year 387; died at Saul, Downpatrick, Ireland, 17 March, 493. Some sources say 460 or 461. --Ed.

He had for his parents Calphurnius and Conchessa. The former belonged to a Roman family of high rank and held the office of decurio in Gaul or Britain. Conchessa was a near relative of the great patron of Gaul, St. Martin of Tours. Kilpatrick still retains many memorials of Saint Patrick, and frequent pilgrimages continued far into the Middle Ages to perpetuate there the fame of his sanctity and miracles.

In his sixteenth year, Patrick was carried off into captivity by Irish marauders and was sold as a slave to a chieftan named Milchu in Dalriada, a territory of the present county of Antrim in Ireland, where for six years he tended his master's flocks in the valley of the Braid and on the slopes of Slemish, near the modern town of Ballymena. He relates in his "Confessio" that during his captivity while tending the flocks he prayed many times in the day: "the love of God", he added,

and His fear increased in me more and more, and the faith grew in me, and the spirit was roused, so that, in a single day, I have said as many as a hundred prayers, and in the night nearly the same, so that whilst in the woods and on the mountain, even before the dawn, I was roused to prayer and felt no hurt from it, whether there was snow or ice or rain; nor was there any slothfulness in me, such as I see now, because the spirit was then fervent within me.

In the ways of a benign Providence the six years of Patrick's captivity became a remote preparation for his future apostolate. He acquired a perfect knowledge of the Celtic tongue in which he would one day announce the glad tidings of Redemption, and, as his master Milchu was a druidical high priest, he became familiar with all the details of Druidism from whose bondage he was destined to liberate the Irish race.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11554a.htm

Irish Protestants: St. Patrick's Day admirers from afar

From Savannah-

Still, Stewart says he's grateful for St. Patrick himself for introducing Christian faith to his homeland.

So does, the Rev. Liam Collins who regards St. Patrick as more than just a cultural icon.

Collins recalls joyful religious traditions on St. Patrick's Day in his native Tipperary, Ireland, where he grew up in a Catholic family.
From the Celtic Cross Ceremony to Mass at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, Roman Catholics have a stamp on nearly everything related to St. Patrick's Day in Savannah.

But all Irish-American Christians have the patron saint to thank for introducing the faith to their ancestors more than 1,500 years ago.

So where are the Irish Protestants in this cultural and religious celebration?

(snip)

Since becoming a priest in the Episcopal Church about 30 years ago, he has let go of his St. Patrick's Day observances, but still regards the day as special.

St. Patrick, he said, is a model of religious and cultural cooperation.

"There are no martyrs in the Celtic church, because when St. Patrick came, the principle of how he worked was the principle of dialogue in a conversation," said Collins, who leads "Celtic Mass" on Sunday evenings at St. Paul the Apostle Church.

"There was no animosity created between what he was bringing in terms of his message and what he found there, which was the ancient druid, pagan practices. He created a great conversation within that culture."

http://savannahnow.com/node/688376