Who Was the Real St. Patrick?

spectator.co.uk

20 points·magda_wang··4 comments

I'm Catholic, but my kids take classes once a week at a school run by an Evangelical church.

I was surprised last March that one of the teachers gave a talk to the kids about how St. Patrick was not a Catholic.

I had never before heard such a suggestion, but apparently it's a sore point with some Evangelicals.

In case it interests you, Jimmy Akin, a Catholic apologist, presents some evidence here that strongly suggests that Patrick was in communion with Rome: http://jimmyakin.com/was-st-patrick-catholic

Well, to be fair, at that time there was no real contention between the Roman and Celtic churches, and I have not seen any evidence that they considered each other outside of one another's communions.

The idea of "Roman" Christianity had not taken hold until Gregory the Great, and especially his successor, Sabinius, who formally accepted the supremacy over all the bishops.

The conflict between the Celtic and Roman churches came later under Augustine of Canterbury, who required the Celtic churches to adopt the Roman rite, abandon their old Italic Bible translations, and adopt the Vulgate. That stirred up quite a kerfuffle.

If you want to read Patrick in his own words check out 'the Confessio': https://www.confessio.ie/#

It's based on the different manuscript copies of the Confessio and the Epistola (or Letter) to Coroticus, both of which are acknowledged as being written by the man himself.

There's always the famous joke about Erwin Schrödinger (who lived the last part of his life in Ireland) and the mathematician/revolutionary Éamon de Valera proving that there were two St. Patricks and no God.

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