Céide and Cardinal Connell

CÉIDE AND CARDINAL CONNELL

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

CÉIDE is a disingenuous magazine.  It has adopted the motto Doras Feasa Fiafraighe which it translates as "The door to knowledge is questioning".  Fiafraighe is more accurately translated as "asking" rather than "questioning".

Anyway, the Céide people are not good questioners.  For example, while they insist upon questioning every aspect of Catholicism which readers of The Brandsma Review accept, why are they so confident about the fruits of the Second Vatican Council?

Why can they not see the irony of calling Céide a "review from the margins" while touting articles by such establishment figures as Garrett FitzGerald, Michael D. Higgins and Mary Robinson (who all have more than their share of questionable actions - unquestioned by an uninquisitive media)?  Why do they accept the media's assertion that journalists, both print and broadcast, do not form but reflect public opinion?

To digress from religion for a moment: consider the recent revelations about the 1970s Arms Trial.  Captain James Kelly has been referred to on the airwaves as the Dreyfus of modern Irish history and is guarranteed a more favourable reception than hitherto.  (It is true that a terrible injustice was done to him - and now that he is "politically correct" how many new supporters will gather round him?).

But is anyone going to sit down and analyse the media presentation of the political protagonists in the intervening years: Messrs. Lynch, Gibbons, O'Malley, Haughey and Blaney?  Céide correspondent Dr FitzGerald got away with referring to Mr Haughey's "flawed pedigree" in Dáil Éireann in 1979, by which he meant the arms trials rather than the more recent allegations of corruption.

Remember how bright the Progressive Democrats were painted in 1985, about two and a half years before they proposed their Godless Constitution on Trinity Sunday of 1988?  But I am not dwelling on the political vagaries of the last 31 years, only the media's assertions about itself that Céide has no trouble accepting.

I would have thought Dr FitzGerald should be ashamed to comment on Ireland's birthrate, as he does in the April/May Céide.  His 1982-1987 coalition closed Carysfort College, confident there would soon be a shortage of primary school children (Family Planning [Amendment] Act, 1985?).   They got it badly wrong: this is a severe shortage of primary teachers now.

Forgive my brief partisan digression.

Knack of opening doors

Céide has a problem with Cardinal Connell.  I must confess I had a good gloat over the commentary by  Fathers Hegarty, Hoban and other anonymous sources sitting at the feet of  Rev Michael Enda McDonagh - in quick succession Professor of Moral Theology in Maynooth; chaplain to Mary Robinson in the Park; and President of the People's Democratic Union of Priests.  Can anyone tell me what Father McDonagh's handshake is like?  I would love to know.  He seems capable of opening so many doors - though his friend Dr FitzGerald failed to talk Monsignor Alibrandi into moving him into a big house in Tuam in the 1980s.

It is funny that these middle-aged established clerics were so shocked at the advent of  a bright young orthodox priest called Fr David O'Hanlon, who was caricatured in Céide's commentary.  (Hang out with Father David for too long and you won't be invited to suburban middle class semi-ds by non-practicing 30-somethings for Chablis and Brie).  Well, they seem to find the septuagenarian cardinal as threatening as the notorious trigintarian curate.

They are hurting

They don't quite say that Cardinal Connell should not have got the red hat.  But they are terribly hurt on behalf of liberal Irish Catholics and Protestant churchmen (who, Father Hegarty tells us, are also disciples.)  Dominus Iesus and intercommunion are the stumbling blocks in regard to the latter.

I have already stated Céide's mantra "Vatican II" (Has anyone analysed this 36-year old fundamentalism - the cult of the Spirit-of-Vatican II?).  So would it come to a surprise to them that Dominus Iesus might be a rehash of Dignatatus Humanae, the Declaration of Religious Liberty?  Dominus Iesus is founded on the conciliar documents as it is written - not on what a manipulative intelligentsia, both ecclesiastical and secular has duped the tea-and-biscuit ecumenists into thinking it says.

Traditionalists have heard endless debates about the use of the Latin verb subsistere (which doesn't quite mean "to subsist") in regard to the Church of Christ in the visible Catholic Church.  This led to a reaction against the document on the council floor.  Dominus Iesus now apologetically uses the same verb, and largely repeats what was stated.  Although it has been denounced as heresy by extreme Dominican supporters of the Society of St Pius X in Avrillé, the greatest opponents of the new document are those who purport to be loyal adherents to its mother-document.

Archbishop Wojtyla, who was influential in the debate on religious liberty at the Council and the framing of the Declaration, is now portrayed as the reactionary pontiff who tenaciously holds on to life.  Rev Professor Joseph Ratzinger, friend of Rahner and Küng, is now the Grand Inquisitor of a reformation tract.  And Dominus Iesus is open to vilification.  One cannot help but question the leadership of the Pontifical Council Promoting Christian Unity, since the time of Cardinal Bea.  So is it really a case of Bea culpa, Bea culpa, Bea maxima culpa?
Shooting the messenger
Monsignor Desmond Connell, Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland, defends the document.  This earns him the ire of liberals, who prefer the Second Vatican Council the way they imagined it rather than the way it was.  Rev Patrick Jones of the National Liturgy Centre must find this every time some erudite lay observer reminds him that Sacrosanctum Concilium did not mandate the gutting of church sanctuaries, and can quote the document.  It goes a lot further than church architecture: eg, it states that Latin should remain the language of the Mass; and that Gregorian chant should be the norm for sung Masses.

And there are more where that came from.  The Council Documents also ask priests and religious to continue wearing a distinctive mode of dress.  The Second Vatican Council did not, or could not, accept the reformed sects as "sister churches" and neither does Dominus Iesus.  Cardinal Connell states this, and the liberal approach is to shoot the messenger.  But that is to be expected from a clergy who are quite used to twisting their presentation of the faith to suit themselves.
Orthodox on intercommunion
As for intercommunion, ecumenism and ecumania - I lament we do not have a larger Eastern Orthodox community in this country.  In that case, ecumenism would have a more balanced focus.  I would relish seeing well-heeled liberal Catholics refused communion by bearded archimandrites at the iconostasis.

Over a decade ago, a delegation from the Russian Church (before the fall of the Soviet Union) visited Maynooth.  An ill-informed deacon offered the Metropolitan of Odessa the chalice at Mass.  The Metropolitan refused.  This has not entered the lore of intercommunion on these islands.  So when Archbishop Connell offends a number of religiously illiterate bourgeois housewives in BASIC who socialise with The Irish Times' Patsy McGarry (who also contributes to Céide), he gets vilified.  And Father Hegarty sees Dr Connell's new red biretta as giving

little hope to Irish Catholic liberals who need leadership

Don't they have the media to lead them where they want to go?
Left losing support
Céide also names Father Vincent Twomey SVD, lecturer in Moral Theology in Maynooth as Connell's ultimate successor.  As I have no access to their crystal ball, I will not comment.  Fr Twomey studied under Ratzinger at Regensburg in the late 1960s, after the future Cardinal moved away from the jet-setting theologians who founded Concilium.

Céide's main source of information on Father Twomey is John Allen's new biography of Cardinal Ratzinger.  John Allen is a correspondent with the American National Catholic Reporter.  This has been the flagship periodical of the American Catholic left since the Second Vatican Council.  It has been losing steam for some time recently, as it has noticed that the younger generation  of American Catholics is either leaving the Church altogether (often to become Eastern Orthodox or evangelical protestants) or going to conservative, traditionalist or eastern Catholic movements.  The United States Catholic left, hard and soft, is losing support.  Would Céide profit by their example?
Swipe at St Thérèse
Céide have some solutions of their own.  They suggested that when Jim Cantwell retired from the Catholic Press and Information Office, he be replaced by a bright young woman like Annette O'Donnell.  Do they seriously believe that perception is everything?  I think they seriously need to question the media.  And they also propose Father John O'Donoghue as the perfect candidate to translate the Church's spiritual treasury into the language of the unchurched young (this is my terminology).  Father O'Donoghue did not even identify himself as a priest in Anamchara, which was a highly questionable work anyway.

Father Hoban denigrates alternatives to Anamchara, such as trips to Medjugorje and tours of boxes of relics (a swipe at St Thérèse of Lisieux).  In the first instance, the Medjurgorje phenonomen has not been (and is unlikely to be) authenticated by the Church, and pilgrimages there are private affairs.  And the tour of St Thérèse's relics is based on an initiative of the laity - not the hierarchy, not the clergy and not the religious.
Spiritual bankruptcy
This is something that Father Hoban should reflect upon: the paternalistic liberals dominating the Irish clergy do not seem to accept the fact that the most dedicated among the laity now have a different vision to them.  Has the faith they once possessed deserted them so completely that they react against anything tainted by traditional Catholicism - even though, in the majority of instances, this does not in fact come from traditionalists?

Do they not see that the apparitions and the prayer-groups and the new devotions are born out of the spiritual and sacramental bankruptcy of many pastoral settings?  The present state of affairs  has its origin in a false reading of the Second Vatican Council.  Céide follows The National Catholic Reporter in this respect.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 54, May-June 2001

Mgr Cremin and the Revolution

MGR CREMIN AND THE REVOLUTION

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Beatus servus quem, cum venerit dominus, invenerit vigilantum - St Matthew, 24:26

DR NOEL BROWNE had a theological advisor.  In his memoirs Against the Tide he outlined the advice he received regarding his Mother and Child Scheme.  The hierarchy were confusing the area of social teaching with moral teaching and reacted incorrectly.  But the advisor was unnamed until the publication of John Horgan's recent biography of Dr Browne.  It was the late Monsignor Patrick Francis Cremin, P.A., S.T.D, J.U.D.

Mgr Cremin was born in Kerry on October 10, 1910.  He had a brilliant student career in Killarney and Maynooth, as well as distinguishing himself as a hurler.  He spent two years in Rome, remarkably achieving two doctorates, one of which was the Juris Utriusque Doctor - Doctor of both Civil and Canon Law. (He was one of only three JUDs who taught at Maynooth since 1795).  He became Professor of Moral and Dogmatic Theology in the Pontifical University, Maynooth on his 29th birthday and in 1949, Professor of Canon Law.  He was Librarian of Maynooth between 1939 and 1946.

One priest said, perhaps in reference to Dr Cremin's prowess with the camán in minor and major seminary, that Frank Cremin occupied the same position on the pitch as ever, but the goalposts were moved so much that he went from the centre to the extreme right.

Resident reactionary pariah

Well, what brought an adviser to the socialist Minister for Health in the 1948-51 Government to become regarded as Maynooth's resident reactionary pariah in the 1980s and1990s?

In 1962, the bishops went to Rome to Pope John's Council.  There was a question whether Professor Cremin would accompany them; most bishops thought not.  The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr McQuaid, brought Dr Cremin as a peritus.  In the course of the council, Francis Cremin debated with other periti - notably Professor Hans Küng - and he worked on Christus Dominus, the Decree on the Bishop's Pastoral Office in the Church, a key document in dealing with the controversial issue of collegiality.

It might be said that few Irishmen has as much insight into the Second Vatican Council as Father Cremin.  But this did not mean preferment.  In 1966, Mgr Mitchell stepped down as President of Maynooth to become parish priest of Ballinrobe.  Fr Cremin was the senior academic in Maynooth and Dean of the Faculty of Canon Law.  The Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Fr Corish, succeeded Mgr Mitchell and he in turn was succeeded by Fr Jeremiah Newman, Professor of Catholic Action and Sociology.  Among other things, Fr Newman was active in promoting the admission of lay students to Maynooth in 1966.  In his capacity as a sociologist, he also spent sometime living in a hippie commune in California.
A job well done
History is written by the victors.  Humanae Vitae was promulgated in 1968 and the Irish hierarchy asked Father Cremin to present it to the Irish media.  Television viewers watched Dr Cremin declare:

There you have it, gentlemen - no change.

To read David Quinn's piece in The Irish Catholic marking the 30th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, one would think the press conference was a disaster.  Immediately after the conference, Professor Cremin asked Archbishop McQuaid's press officer for an appraisal of how he handled the media, and was told he did very well.

It seems controversy developed afterwards when a would-be Labour TD named Conor Cruise-O'Brien initiated a protracted correspondence on the subject in The Irish Times.  But how in tune with Irish public opinion was Dr Cruise-O'Brien at the time?

Leaving aside the antics of Mrs Robinson, Mary Kenny and others on a train from Belfast in the 1970s, the criminalisation of contraception was found to be unconstitutional in the Magee judgement in 1973, thanks to the "emanation of a penumbra" school of jurisprudence, enabling the Supreme Court to discover a "right to marital privacy" in de Valera's constitution.  So the then Fine Gael liberal, Patrick Cooney, attempted to legislate on the matter in 1975.  After a debate, during which the former Fianna Fáil Justice Minister Desmond O'Malley referred to Mr Cooney's Bill as a "licence to fornicate" (I am not making this up), Dáil  Éireann was startled to see An Taoiseach, Liam MacCosgair and several Fine Gael TDs walking through the Níl lobby with Fianna Fáil.

In 1979, Charles Haughey was Minister for Health and Social Welfare and he introduced his Family Planning Bill.  At the time, the Bill was opposed by a majority of voters in Deputy Haughey's constituency.  Mr Haughey's Act has been described as an Irish solution to an Irish problem, as if Serbo-Croatian solutions to Irish problems are somehow more desirable.  This allowed contraceptives on to the statute books for the first time since their ban in the 1920s.  It was a decisive factor in bringing Pope John Paul II to Ireland on his third foreign trip.
Lengthy transition
This was the law until Dr FitzGerald and Mr Desmond decided otherwise in 1985.  I was outside Leinster House the day Mr Desmond's Bill was debated in the Oireachtas.  The climate outside was palpable.  Most of the people of Ireland did not want this Bill passed.  Mr O'Malley was again on the opposition benches and this time he just couldn't make up his mind, so he abstained.  At the division, 83 voted Tá, 80 Níl, with two abstentions - largely a result of the imposition of a three-line whip.  This was before the red herring of AIDS was introduced into the equation.

A few years later, Deputy Haughey was Taoiseach and Deputy O'Malley, now leader of the Progressive Democrats, was in his cabinet and AIDS was seen as a burning issue.  Mr O'Malley assured the Taoiseach of his party's support for a further relaxation of Mr Desmond's Act.  He found that half his party had problems with his liberal stance on the issue - but all this evaporated a few years later when Brendan Howlin succeed Dr John O'Connell as Minister for Health in 1992.  It took Ireland nearly a quarter of a century after Humanae Vitae to embrace the contraceptive mentality.  And this transition did not come easily.  For this reason, I cannot conclude that the 1968 launch of Humanae Vitae was a disaster.
Pipped by Casey
Following the press conference, Fr Cremin had other battles.  He was passed over for the episcopacy - notably when Fr Éamonn Casey was made Bishop of Kerry.  His Eminence William Cardinal Conway told Mgr Casey that it had taken him four years to convince the Congregation of Bishops that he was a better choice than Dr Cremin.  Dr Cremin got the title Monsignor as a consolation prize.

Some rebel seminarists in Maynooth demanded a course on sexual ethics.  Mgr Cremin agreed, on the condition he could deliver the course in a language of his choice.  Henceforth the lectures and examinations on the subject were exclusively in Latin.  But Maynooth had taken a turn for the worse and Mgr Cremin discovered he had to explain matters to Third Divinity students on topics they should have covered in First Divinity, and later, even things that should have been dealt with in school catechesis.

In the late 1970s, he had a series of four articles published in the Irish Independent entitled "What's Wrong with Maynooth?"  This was principally an appeal to the hierarchy to do something.   The one active element of his career was to assist in the drafting of the 1983 Codex Iuris Canonici, with the special reference to the section on the canon law of marriage.  In 1998, he was made a Protonotary Apostolic.
Lonely retirement
Mgr Cremin's years following his retirement were lonely.  A whole folklore about him developed in the college that was quite inconsistent with reality.  Clerical students were not encouraged to make a habit of speaking with him, and those who did were rewarded with a reprimand.  He did not say the Tridentine Mass, nor even the Novus Ordo in Latin.  He said the Novus Ordo Mass in English in the Lady Chapel in Maynooth College Chapel, using Roman vestments and strictly adhering to the rubrics - and he said the Roman canon in a low voice.  On one occasion, I served his Mass and reminded myself that the celebrant of the Novus Ordo Mass used water only for the post communion purifications and not wine, as in the old Mass.  So I was suprised when he requested wine.  He said Mass versus Dominum until the altar in the Lady Chapel was taken back.

He was incredibly well informed about the current situation in the Church.  He believed this current crisis to be worse than the Reformation and that the situation was beyond human redemption.  He was confident of a glorious revival, though not in his own lifetime.  He continued to maintain a broad focus on the world, reading several newspapers regularly, and I remember during a spate of industrial action, his response was to say we neglected the encyclicals on social justice at our peril.
Deeper problems
At a more local level, he was critical of the Maynooth authorities' sudden hardening of attitude towards domestic staff in the early 1990s (until then, domestic staff were treated in a manner consistent with Catholic social teaching rather than with contemporary business practice).  He retained his interest in sport, but regarded the disproportionate reaction to Ireland's soccer successes in 1988, 1990 and 1994 as symptomatic of deeper problems.

In 1999, he moved out of Maynooth when the college authorities closed the infirmary.  This meant that, as his health was deteriorating, he could not rely on medical care as hitherto.  Care for retired academic staff was no longer a priority at St Patrick's College, Maynooth.  On November 1, 2001 he died in a nursing home in Tralee.

Requiem aeternum dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetuae luceat ei.  Anima ejus, et animae omnium fidelium defunctorum, per misericordiam Dei, requiescant in pace.  Amen.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 59, March-April 2002  

Engaging the National Patron

ENGAGING THE NATIONAL PATRON
by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS
Vivo autem iam non ego vivit vero in me Christus.(Galatians 2, 20)

ONE EXERCISE I did in the New Year was a response to a challenge by Joe McCarroll was to return to the fundamental documents concerning Christianity in Ireland. I am referring to St Patrick’s Confessions and Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus. I worked through Dr Ludwig Bieler’s Latin text, helpfully provided in Bishop William Philbin’s Mise Pádraig and Bishop Joseph Duffy’s Patrick in His Own Words. Both bishops provided their own translation, Mgr Philbin in Irish and Mgr Duffy in English.  The former Bishop of Clogher, though, provided a free translation and also used The Jerusalem Bible as a model for the numerous scriptural quotes, for which the saint used the pre-Vulgate Latin translations. In this, Mgr Duffy followed the trends in the 1970s which elevated readability over literal accuracy in scripture and liturgy alike. But let me state that the notes in the bishop’s text are also valuable and it is possible to consult the Latin text with the English translation. For those who read Irish, Mgr Philbin’s text is both accurate and elegant and he too provides an interesting commentary.

Irish history begins in 431. This is not to say nothing happened in Ireland before this; there is plenty of evidence that much did. What it does say is that an entry in the Prosper of Aquataine’s Chronicle for this year tells us that Pope Celestine IV sent Bishop Palladius to preach to the Irish believing in Christ.  This was the initial point of a continuum which marked the systematic recording of Irish history since then, which what I mean by the first statement. The sentence itself tells us that there were Irish Christians prior to this date. There are several reasons why this was the case. First of all, there was much commercial interaction between Ireland and what is now Wales. The languages of both were still mutually comprehendible. There was population movement and trade between the two countries. Ireland was a good place to go in periods of persecution when it was still an issue in the Roman Empire. There were conversions of native Irish. And of course, many Christians were brought to Ireland as slaves.

We do not know a lot about Palladius, but the little we know is quite interesting. He was associated with St Germanus of Auxerre. St Germanus was in Britain in 429 to deal with the Pelagian heresy. Pelagius himself was British and though the case is made that he was personally orthodox, he has left his name on a heresy. He met both Ss Augustine and Jerome and made an impression. St Jerome said he was bloated with Scottish (i.e. Irish) porridge (Scotorum pultibus proegravatus). Pelagianism rejects Original Sin and the Grace of God, so Pelagians believe they gain heaven by their own labour alone and Christ is an exemplar rather than a saviour. Palladius went from Britain to Ireland where his mission was probably more successful than we imagine. But he was only the precursor in the story.

Of Welsh, Cornish and Breton stock

Before I even begin on St Patrick, there is much controversy over both his date and place of birth. I have heard a lot of arguments locating Bannava Tabarniae in Scotland, England and France, but as none of the above were yet settled by Scots, Anglo- Saxons or Franks, the location is irrelevant to the saint’s nationality. St Patrick was a Roman citizen and ethnic Celt. His family were well off, had been Christian for a few generations and seemed to have had interests in both Britain and Gaul. Mgr Duffy argues the saint’s Latin had a Gaulish accent, but this may be a product of education rather than upbringing. There was a British colony in present day Scotland, but it seems very far from a Gaulish base. I am convinced by the argument that “Tabarniae” could be the genitive for “Sabarnia”, which could indicate somewhere around the mouth of the Severn (“t” can replace an initial “s” in Celtic genitives, with the pattern crossing into Celtic Latin). Calling the saint a Welshman is an anachronism, but he was certainly of the stock of the Welsh, Cornish and Bretons. The saint was born in the late fourth century at the earliest, but I am more persuaded for the theory that his mission began in the 450s rather than the traditional 432 which seems much too close to Palladius’ apostolate. In this regard, I would calculate that the saint was born in the early fifth century.

The young saint had no interest in Christianity. He tells us that before his abduction he was guilty of some sin or other which was sufficiently grave to cause him shame much later in life. It has been suggested by modern commentators that this sin was sexual, but this would not have had particular opprobrium attached among young men of his class in the late Roman Empire, so the suggestion it was murder is a bit more convincing. St Patrick believed his abduction was a punishment for this sin. He was taken to Ireland and sold into slavery, with members of his household and others. He was sold to a farmer to keep flocks and herds, in a place now believed to be Slemish in Co Antrim. The later biographers of St Patrick state he kept pigs, but present day farmers believe only sheep would survive on the higher slopes of Slemish and pigs and cattle would be confined to lower ground. It is possible the saint did a variety of work, but what is clear is that his Christianity came alive on Slemish. Here he prayed one hundred times a day and one hundred times a night. He was eventually guided by a dream to run two hundred miles away to find a ship to take him to Gaul, Mgr Philbin suggests around Killala Bay. Initially, he was not admitted as he refused to compromise his new found Christianity. The captain thought better of it and sent a sailor after him to bring him back. It turned out that his presence was useful.  The ship landed in Gaul and the crew wandered severa lweeks in the wilderness before asking Patrick topray. After which they came upon a herd of pigs. The devastation in Gaul testifies to the barbarian assaults as the Roman Empire was breaking down in the West.

Internalised the Scriptures

St Patrick was reunited with his family at the age of twenty-two. They wanted him to stay, but he knew he had to go elsewhere. He missed out on several valuable years’ in education, which is seen in his Latin, but he did study. If the Confession and the Letter to Coroticus show anything, it is how he internalised the scripture. This is evident after he returned to Ireland.  Though later writings give a developed narrative on St Patrick’s work in Ireland, the saint himself has little to say. A strong case can be made that Letter came before the Confession. The Confession appears to be a justification made afterward. In the Letter, the saint doesn’t mince his words about the raids on Ireland.  Many of his own converts were murdered or enslaved. He attempted to ransom the converts but was rebuffed. He excommunicated all the perpetrators.  This is where the bone of contention appears to have arisen: the Church in Britain were not prepared to recognise this and carried on as if nothing had happened.  At this stage, the saint produced his own apologia.

Unconventional

The Confession is not a conventional autobiography, but does give us most of the reliable biographical information we have about St Patrick. To a large extent it is a reaction against the charges made against him by the British Church. In this respect, he is very defensive. No one can doubt the man’s sincerity, but if there is a recurring theme again and again, it is his refrain that he did not carry out the work, but that God worked through him. This is an assertion of orthodox theology against Pelagianism. It happens too often not to be deliberate. The context of a British church riddled with Pelagianism while denigrating Patrick’s personal integrity occurs to one straight away. Issues such as his lack of polished Latin or the unknown sin of his youth came up at the time, and he justified himself. They also suggested he made money from the apostolate, when in fact he spent the little he had to work with.

Trials like Saint Paul’s

One imagines that St Patrick identified very closely with St Paul. He quotes him again and again. In recounting his own trials at the hands of some more hostile recipients, St Patrick’s list is very similar to that of St Paul. Though he was not martyred, he came close enough to it on a few occasions. In relation to his effect on those he preached to, one upper class lady came to him within days of receiving baptism seeking to take the veil. Though St Patrick’s own writing plays down the miraculous, one is impressed that the saint is living in the wake of the original Pentecost with all the gifts and fruits of the Holy Ghost, nowhere more than in the response of the Irish to his preaching.

The Confessions may be termed a working autobiography or apologia, but it lacks finality. This is par for the course in such works. However, at the time of writing, the saint concluded that the substantive work of converting the Irish to Christianity was done. To a certain extent, he seems to have believed himself to be in the end times, because he states that the message of Christ was brought to the world’s edge. This was, and is, one of the conditions which must precede the last times. St Patrick lived through the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west. Though he was first taken from his privileged position as a Roman citizen, he later chose to forego it for the greater glory of God.  But he was aware that for a great many people just like him, there was little choice in the matter. In this way, the Confessions has a flavour of the Apocalypse as well as of the Acts. St Patrick did not completely obliterate heathendom in Ireland. It took several centuries after him before this was the case: evangelisation is a slow and drawn out process and our own day shows us it can never be taken for granted and frequently needs renewal. But what the mission of the national apostle ensured was that it would happen. The impression he made on the Irish, particularly on the nobility in the north of the country which had been least touched by pre-Patrician Christian incursions, put the chain of events in motion which would result in the nation embracing the faith in its entirity sooner rather than later.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 137, March-April 2014