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

Céide Pops it Clogs - Shall we dance?

CÉIDE POPS ITS CLOGS - SHALL WE DANCE?

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

 I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him - Mark Anthony in Julius Caesar

THERE is a difference between writing an obituary and dancing on someone's grave and by the time I am finished this article, I am sure no one will have any doubt as to which of the two I am indulging in here.  (If you have not already guessed when you saw my name under the above headline on the cover.)  I have had occasion to comment upon Céide in the past, after my attention was drawn to the magazine by the late Mgr Cremin.  Mgr Cremin was furious that the pre-launch publicity should advertise a robust respect for dissent.  When it was launched in September 1997, I said:

Céide, my friends, is a bunch of ancient hippies talking to themselves.  For all their talk of imagination and creativity, they offer only the smae worn-out clichés.  Harmless as it seems, this medicine has well-nigh destroyed the Church in Holland, Canada and elsewhere.  These guys just don't get it.  (BR, Issue 33)

I returned to the theme last year:

This [the American National Catholic Reporter] has been the flagship periodical of the American Catholic left since the Second Vatican Council.  It has been losing steam for some time...The United States Catholic left, hard and soft, is losing support.  Would Céide profit by their example (BR, Issue 54)

Signs of the times
Well now, maybe it is time for the National Catholic Reporter to imitate Céide - and fold.  Liberals always talk of the sings of the times and how we must interpret them.  So, let us look at a few signs of the times.  The contrast between the National Catholic Reporter and another American Catholic paper, The Wanderer, was interesting.  Some time ago, both seemed to have similar circulations.  But on investigation, the NCR's source of revenue was due to priests who ordered multiple copies for their churches.  The more conservative Wanderer relied principally on individual subscriptions from laity who went to the trouble to order it in the post.  It takes no logic to deduce which of the two had the greater support of a committed laity.  So what did the signs of the times indicate?  And now, the Wanderer has a clearer lead.

I don't know what the circulation of Céide was.  It may well have been several times that of the Brandsma Review, but I doubt it.  The point is that the Brandsma Review has reached its tenth anniversary (ad multos annos!) since the horrible days in the immediate aftermath of the X Case, and Céide will not see its fifth anniversary.  The Brandsma Review has been for the most part a lay enterprise, notwithstanding the support of Father Brendan Purcell and many other priests over the years - between contributors, promoters and subscribers.  Céide has been first and foremost a clerical initiative, with some lay collaborators.

The Brandsma Review has always been run on a shoestring budget and seeks to present its message unadorned to those who will read it.  Céide, on the other hand, was always an elegant production, complete with coloured photographs and a glossy finish.  The lack of advertisements was sufficient evidence of generous donors.  Nevertheless, the quality of the magazine was not enough to generate the necessary readership to sustain the magazine.  Therefore, why not question the message?
Charter for a People's Church
The editorial team in Céide had absolutely no doubt about the message.  In the final edition, their anonymous critic of ecclesiastical politics, An Ridire (the knight - the only Irish word apparently derived from the German language, from Ritter) spells out what the message is:

The success of the divine conspiracy - enforced accountability, decline of vocations, the growth of lay structures, the end of oppressiveness of clericalism, the sweep of democracy - will ensure the continued implosion of structures that militate against the progress of the Church, sharing the Good News.  The game is up, lads.  God's hand will not be stayed.

I thought this rather ironic.  It came at the end of a charter for a People's Church.  A People's Church which will be governed by lay structures, with

...[a] more creative and compassionate response to issues like divorce and remarriage...the reconstitution of a new priesthood will lead to married clergy and in time the ordination of women.  The next concerted push of the forces of democratisation...will sweep aside the creaky structures that paid too much respect to élites and hierarchies.

To the barracades, comrades!  When I read the above, I heard a choir singing in the back of my head: 

Partiya Lenina, sila narodnaya/Nas k torzhestvu Komunisma vedyot! (Party of Lenin, strength of the People/To Communism's triumph lead us on!)

For those who don't know, I am quoting the Hymn of the Soviet Union.  I am not accusing Der Ritter of being a Stalinist - only of being oblivious to the irony of using this type of rhetoric: the irony is that the game is actually up for Céide rather than for Our Mother, the Church.
On the margins? 
Since the first Pentecost, the Church has seen a lot of demagogues come and go, preaching all sorts of weird and wonderful things, just as she has seen all sorts of prophets of doom attacking her from the other side.  But Céide seems to have been frozen  into its own particular historical and geographical groove, unable in a serious way to engage either with contemporary cultures or - very importantly for Catholics (the Church does teach that tradition is a source of revelation) - with all the previous generations of Catholics in this and other Catholic cultures.  And the Céide people are themselves an élite and a hierarchy of sorts, supremely confident that they know best.

Céide forever prided itself on being on the margins.  Was it really?  It attracted some very heavyweight writers over the years.  It was very happy challenging the Church hierarchy, but did not relish opposing something like The Irish Times or the intelligentsia in this country.  Its target audience were not the underprivileged in Irish society - given the price and content of Céide and its failure to address their real concerns.

 The general views of this country's underclass on travellers and refugees, for example, would make the hair stand up straight or many politically-correct heads.  The only thing marginal about the magazine was how insignificant the Céide team were in the context of the bigger picture and how this reality was lost on them.
More mediaeval view
I am not sure any more if, strictly speaking, Céide was on the Left.  In some ways it was quite conservative.  I was personally educated in the Enlightenment ethos (which I have substantially rejected).  One of its tenets was the separation of Church and State and another was universal freedom of religion and conscience.

In one sense, it is of little significance how few in this country profess or practice Catholicism.  If it is a small minority, it is our duty to act as witnesses to the Faith in the hope of conversion through example, but we may not force the faith on anyone.  The Céide team seemed to have a more mediaeval view of the organic connexion between Church, State and society, believing society must be maintained within the Church at all costs.

If this meant the Church must embrace the mores of society, they seemed to regard this as preferable to writing off huge numbers of members.  Céide tended towards a form of Erastianism, based as much on public opinion as secular authority.  The imperative seemed to be to keep the 95% of citizens of the 26 counties who are nominally Catholic still actually calling themselves Catholic, in spite of deviations in faith and morals by a great proportion of them.
Crowning with Thorns
It would have been salutary for the Céide team to have reflected on the Third Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary, the Crowning with Thorns.  Listen to the mob before Pilate: "We have no king but Caesar!"  Our Lord, with the mock crown on His head, clearly announces to Pilate that His kingdom is not of this world.  The Céide worldview did not seem to acknowledge the subtle distinction between sacred and secular authority.  You do not deny the kingship of Christ just to accommodate the crowd.

Given that Der Ritter gives divorce as an example of creative compassion, I seem to recall a particular divorce case where some creative compassion was demanded.  A certain progressive and very successful cleric reckoned he could acquire an annulment for his employer and failed, ending his life with the words "If only I served God as well as I have served my king..."  A reactionary layman stood up to the king at the time, at the cost of his life - and proclaimed himself at the scaffold to be "the king's good servant, but God's first".  If they don't know what I am talking about here, the writers in Céide would do well to rent the video A Man for All Seasons for a night.

 Well, Céide have not succeeded in accommodating the crowd.  Instead they have faded into oblivion, largely unnoticed by the world around them.  They have not impressed a new vision on the Catholic faithful in Ireland.  And for all their trumpet blowing, the desired innovations within the Church are as far away as ever.  And last time I checked, John Paul II was still Pope.

I do not believe this is the last we will hear from the Céide team - they will still be around for some time.  But they will not be so fast to launch a magazine like this again.  Their support base is not growing.  It is dwindling.

Now, can anybody strike up a hornpipe?  I think I want to dance.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 61, July-August 2002 

St Lorcan the Peacemaker

SAINT LORCAN THE PEACEMAKER

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Beati pacifici: quoniam filii Dei vocabuntur - St Matthew, 5:9

A Muire as mor in gním ado ringed in hErend indiu.(Mary, terrible is the deed done in Ireland this day) - A Leinster scribe lamenting the banishment of Diarmait Mac Murchada in 1166)

WE often judge past in the light of subsequent events.  For example, there is a tendency to see the First World War through the prism of the Second.  Notwithstanding nasty Prussian militarism, the Central Powers were not comparable with the Axis Powers a generation later.  The former's defeat was no great triumph for the West - it rather set Europe up for something much worse.

Likewise, we should not look at Brian Boróma through post-Norman invasion spectacles (pardon the anachronism).  A disgruntled, dispossessed Gaelic noble gave his version of events in Cogadh Gaedel re Gallda.  The central thesis was that the Ua Conchobair dynasty was as incompetent against the Norman as the Uí Néill were against the Viking - but Brian Boróma was the Irish military exemplare and ideal king.

The truth was different.  The Vikings were long defeated and baptised prior to Clontarf, in which more of them were allied to Brian's real enemy, Máel Mórda, than to Brian himself.  Contemporary Irish aristocrats regarded Brian as a parvenu of inferior ancestry (the monks of Cashel could even point at two pedigrees - one was obviously flawed).  And Clontarf was a Phyrric victory - it resulted in several generations of internecine warfare preparing the country for the Norman invasion.

For all that, Brian was ruthless and able, and if he allowed his admiration for Charlemagne carry him away (signing the Book of Armagh as Imperator Scottorum), it was his vision of a centralised Irish kingdom which dominated Irish political thought ever since.

Clontarf devastated Leinster.  A ruler with the unlikely moniker of Diarmait mac Máel na mBó attained the kingship of Leinster in 1042 and claimed the high kingship a generation after Brian.  His sept, the Uí Cennsalaig, would dominate Leinster politics in the following centuries (though they hadn't provided a king for several centuries previously).  Many lines vied for the high kingship and the country was beset by intermittent civil war and anarchy.

The former Viking towns looked to Canterbury for spiritual guidance, and Gaelic churchmen recognised Lanfranc and St Anselm's designs on Ireland.  They delivered the reform of the Irish church during the ceasefires.

Blessed Eugenius III approved the Irish Church's reforms by granting the requested pallia to Armagh and Cashel and granting additional pallia to Dublin and Tuam on his own initiative.  Thus he guarranteed the independence of the Irish Church in 1152.  Eugenius was a Cistercian and saw that the reform was Cistercian-driven.  His mentor, St Bernard of Clairvaux, was very close to St Malachy of Armagh.  The black monks and white monks were engaged in a power struggle at the time and Eugenius was succeed by an English Benedictine, Adrian IV.

Young Henry II wanted to conquer Ireland and sent John of Salisbury to get Adrian's approbation.  In 1155, Adrian saw the Irish Church differently to his predecessor (there were few Benedictines in Ireland), so he commissioned Henry to bring Christianity to Ireland in Laudabiliter.  The Empress Mathilda was still alive and had no desire to see her son engage in wasteful adventures.  So Henry neglected his charge for another decade and a half.

Twelfth-century Ireland was dominated by the career of Diarmait MacMurchada.  He became king of Leinster in 1126.  Unable to compete for the high kingship like his great-grandfather, he could and did make it difficult for others.  The year he took the throne, Lorcan Ua Tuathail (Laurence O'Toole) was born in Wicklow.  Until the advent of Diarmait mac Máel na mBó, the Ua Tuathail were a more prestigious family than MacMurchada.  Lorcan's mother was an Ua Brain princess of Uí Faeláin, from North Leinster's second family (Wicklow and Kildare were in north Leinster at the time).  In the Gaelic custom, Lorcan was sent to the Ua Conchobair of Uí Fáilge for foseterage, which aligned him to a third powerful house in Leinster, as befitted a young prince.  All was well until Leinster nobles intrigued against the king in 1141.  Diarmait killed or blinded 17 of the conspirators in anticipatory retaliation.  Muirchertach Ua Tuathail became head of the Uí Muireadaig and his only daughter was married to Diarmait.  As a safeguard against further plots, Diarmait dragged Lorcan with other Leinster princes to Ferns as hostages.
A clear insult
The old Gaelic order was very strict on the treatment of hostages, but Diarmait did not comply.  He sent Lorcan to an inferior household, a clear insult to his wife's family.  Muirchertach seized a few of Diarmait's key officers and threatened to kill them if his son was not released.  Diarmait placed the boy in the custody of the Abbot of Glendalough until Muirchertach let his men go.  Lorcan was tired of politics now and wanted to remain in Glendalough as a monk.  An ironic beginning to a vocation that would place him at the epicentre of a political crisis which would have permanent repercussions in Ireland.

There were doubts about Lorcan in Glendalough.  His education was martial rather than literary.  And there was discontent when his father nominated him as abbot in 1153 (which was in Muirchertach's gift).  Lorcan had already been ordained to the priesthood when younger than the canonical age of 30.  However, it is a tribute to Lorcan that he was the near unanimous choice as Bishop of Glendalough when Gilla na Náemh died in 1157.  He refused on the grounds he was too young.

In 1161, he became Archbishop of Dublin.  There had been eight Bishops of Dublin before his immediate predecessor Gréne (Gregory) got the pallium in 1152.  These were all Ostmen (as the descendents of the Vikings were called) with no love for the Gaelic Irish and until the Synod of Kells, they looked to Canterbury rather than Armagh.  Lorcan's brother-in-law, Diarmait, was overlord of Dublin and he had a hand in the election.  The Primate, Gilla mac Liag MacRuaidri, consecrated Lorcan.

The Dublin Ostmen were not enthusiastic about the appointment.  Christ Church Cathedral was Lorcan's first priority.  He introduced the observantine Arrouasian Congregation of Augustinian Canons into the cathedral and as far as his administrative duties allowed, he took an active part in Christ Church's liturgical life (wearing the Arrouasian habit) and he was known for his prayer, penance and almsdeeds.

The best known Irish twelfth century scandal was Diarmait's abduction of Derbforgall, Tigernan Ua Ruairc's wife in 1152.  Commentators suggest Derbforgall had a role in this, but the king of Breffny became Diarmait's sworn enemy for the insult - even after Derbforgall was returned with her fortune.  The other party to the insult was Mór, Lorcan's sister, who withdrew to a convent in Dublin.  This event would have a disproportionate bearing on subsequent Irish history.

Things came to a head in 1166 when the kings of Ireland combined under Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair to expel Diarmait from Ireland.  They accomplished this and Ua Ruairc drew sinful pleasure form plundering Diarmait's castle in Ferns.

It was a short-lived victory.  Diarmait spent the next year seeking Norman aid.  Though Henry II was too occupied to give him immediate help, he did see the request as a golden opportunity (to rid himself of troublesome vassals).  Diarmait still had a problem persuading the Norman Earls on the Welsh Marches to join him, but they did come, to stay.  Initially Diarmait recovered his own territory.  Then he attempted to take Leinster.  The high king successfully thwarted him, but the worst was yet to come.

Strongbow's advance party camped at Baginbun in 1169.  They were reinforced by the main force and took Waterford, after which Strongbow married Diarmait's daughter (Lorcan's niece) Aífe.  Strongbow turned on Dublin.  The Ostman king, Asgall MacTorchaill's fleet controlled the Irish Sea.  A formidable Irish hosting protected Dublin, but Diarmait and Strongbow avoided them, and when Dublin sought terms, Ruaidrí withdrew.  Lorcan now had to intercede with his in-laws on behalf of his flock as Dublin's finest went with Asgall and the navy (and their valuables) to the Isle of Man.  When Asgall returned with reinforcements, Norman luck again prevailed and Asgall, defiant to the end, was beheaded in the hall of his own palace.  A Manx naval squadron blockaded Dublin for two months and Strongbow got into deeper trouble as Diarmait died, but now Henry arrived in Ireland.
Parallel with Becket?
Henry was an unlikely crusader.  He had been excommunicated for his role in St Thomas Beckett's murder, as England faced an interdict - and he came to Ireland to restore Christianity!  His obsequiousness to the Papal Legate, Christian O Conarchy was in marked contrast to his refusal to admit legates to England at the time.  Henry's main motivation in Ireland  was not its conquest, for religious or secular reasons, but the containment of his own Anglo-Norman subjects.  He didn't want an independent Norman kingdom to his west.  He attended the Second Synod of Cashel in the winter of 1171-1172 to convince the Pope of his fidelity.  The Irish bishops were prepared to accept Henry's lordship if he would bring an end to Ireland's protracted political instability.

Though the Normans were as politically divided as the native Irish, they had a clear military superiority and only mutual rivalry and apathy (the former encouraged by Henry) prevented them from overrunning the whole island.  In 1175, Lorcan was the chief negotiator of the Treaty of Windsor between Henry and Ruaidrí.  As the treaty was not honoured, we can only deduce that Lorcan was more interested in securing a peaceful political settlement for Ireland than in rival political claims.  During the negotiation, an assailant attempted to fell Lorcan with an axe as he said Mass.  Noting the similarities between this and Beckett's martyrdom, most contemporaries cast a suspicious eye on Henry.

After Windsor, Lorcan had another test.  St Malachy of Armagh had achieved autonomy for the Irish Church a generation earlier.  It was now for Lorcan to defend it.  Alexander III broadly endorsed the Norman invasion of Ireland, in spite of his distrust of Henry.  He now angered Henry by naming Lorcan as Papal Legate in Ireland in 1179.  Lorcan had a high standing in the universal church and he participated in the Second Lateran Council that year.

As Papal Legate, Lorcan was concerned that the 12th Century reform should not be undone, as signs indicated it would be.  The role of the Norman in this process was interesting.  If the Bull Laudabiliter commissioned Henry to reform the Irish Church, Lorcan must have sensed some irony.  In slightly more than one year in office, he reported over a hundred Norman clerics holding Irish benefices to Roman ecclesiastic tribunals for sundry offences.

One would suspect that Lorcan would no longer be the best candidate to negotiate with Henry.  But this is exactly what Ruaidrí asked him to do in 1180.  Lorcan undertook to do so, to find that Henry refused to see him and left England for France.  Lorcan followed him to Normandy where he fell ill and died in the Abbey of Eu on the night of November 14.  The Augustinian Canons were convinced of his sanctity and investigated his life; one canon wrote his biography.  The cause for his canonisation is regarded as the first modern ecclesiastical legal process in history.  It received overwhelming support from old adversaries - the Ostmen of Dublin, once opposed to his appointment as archbishop, now wholeheartedly endorsed his sanctity.  Even the Normans attested to the prelate's virtue.  In 1225, he was canonised by Pope Honorius II and his feast is on November 14.  His body lies in Eu, but his heart is in his own cathedral - Christ Church.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 76, January-February 2005

Rebel Standun Stuck in a Rut

REBEL STANDÚN STUCK IN A RUT

by JOHN HENEGHAN

EAGLAIS NA gCATACÓMAÍ

by Pádraig Standún. Cló Iarchonnachta.  316pp.  €16.00

THIS book is an apologia pro vita sua in which the author defines the Church of the Catacombs as the Church of dissent: those who cannot accept the official Church.

The introductory chapter gives us the same definition of his role as a rebel.  However, in this regard Standún is not original - he is echoing the current intolerant criticism of the Church as evidenced in Shattered Vows by David Rice and Change and Decay: Irish Catholicism in Crisis by Brendan Hoban.

Chapter Two gives an interesting account of the author's youth in Mayo and how it pointed him in the direction of the priesthood.

Further on in the book he has rightly exposed the problems that existed in Maynooth - but he has used them as a propaganda tool to whip the entire official Church.

Tháinig scéalta chun solais i lár bliana 2002 a thugann le fios gur lú smacht arís, féinsmacht san áireamh a bhí ag Maigh Nuad sna blianta tar éis domsa é a fhágáil. (Page 182)

His clamouring for women priests despite the papal instruction that this is not a matter for discussion is a challenge to papal authority.

Tá a leithéid fireann nó baineann i ngach paróiste ar domhan.  Cén fáth mar sin a bhfuil Pobal Dé fágtha gan Eocaraist?  (Page 105)

Father Standún and his contemporaries find it difficult to accept that they are the greying generation and that their status as rebels has left them stuck in a rut.  Time and the Church have passed them by.

Surely true liberals are not threatened by Traditionalists?  (In fact they can accommodate both the Old Rite and the Novus Ordo despite its variation from parish to parish.)

In my Master's Thesis Pádraig Standún: Saol agus Saothar (unpublished, 1991) I accused Father Standún of a lack of depth in his work because of his use of literature instead of journalism as an instrument of propaganda.  Alan Titley's An tÚrscéal Gaeilge subsequently altered my perspective on this when he pointed out that there are several types of novel apart from the classical mode from Cervantes' Don Quixote.  Therefore any literary work can be described as a novel on its own terms.

In fairness to Pádraig Standún one must admit he has not hesitated to highlight the social problems of the Gaeltacht.  However, while exposing the sexual problems is not a bad thing in itself, an obsession with sexual mores and their linkage with compulsory celibacy and child abuse is somewhat tiresome to the reader.  (So too was the kind of smuttiness suggested by Budawanny, the title of the film of Standún's earlier novel Súil le Breith).  Nevertheless, Standún must be given credit for raising these social issues.

However, from a literary perspective Eaglais na gCatacómaí  is weak.  As Breandán Ó Doibhlin, the eminent critic and novelist has pointed out: a novel must be assessed on its own merits: the author is irrelevant.  Father Standún's elementary mistake is to confuse literature with life.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 76, January-February 2005

St Fergal - Unconventional Apostle

SAINT FERGAL - UNCONVENTIONAL APOSTLE

by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Nihil est opertum, quod non revelabitur;et occultum quod non scietur - St Matthw, 10, 26

One of the consolations of Pope Zachary's life...was the filial friendship of Saint Boniface...Among their correspondence..of especial interest...in the light of all the conjecture...over the past few years...of the possibility of "inhabited planets" other than our own...in answer to Saint Boniface's complaint that an Irish priest named Virgilius was disturbing men's minds by teaching that there was another world, other men on another planet beneath the earth, another sun, and another moon...[Pope Zachary] ordered Saint Boniface to reprimand Virgilius, and...to send him to Rome so that his doctrine might be examined...[I]t was not necessary...to condemn Virgilius, for the priest completely yielded to correction...of his Holy Father and went on...to sanctify himself.  He became Bishop of Salzburg, and lived such a life of holiness....that he was canonised by Pope Gregory IX.  (The above piece of papolatrous fantasy comes from Our Glorious Popes by "Sister" Catherine MICM of the Feeneyite Slaves of the Immaculate Heart, itself condemned by St Zachary's more recent successors)

I ONCE attended Mass in a German city on September 24, feast of Ss Rupert and Virgil, the patrons of Salzburg.  German-speakers principally know Salzburg at the birthplace of Mozart.  For most Anglophones, it is better known as the setting of The Sound of Music.  The city has ancient roots: its archbishop is the Primate of the Germans.  Salzburg was Bavarian until the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and rigid distinction between Germany and Austria only dates from 1945.

Ireland has an old association with Salzburg.  Some claim its first archbishop, St Rupert, Apostle of Bavaria and Austria, was an Irishman named Robartach, but more reliable sources say he was Frankish.  However, Irish monks largely provided his education and he brought many with him to Salzburg.  The pre-eminent had yet to come.  This was Rupert's successor, St Virgil or Fergal.
Abbot in Salzburg
Fergal was born in the south of Ireland around 700 and little is known of his early life.  He became a monk and was educated on the Aran Islands, returning to the mainland to succeed St Canice as Abbot of Aghaboe, Co Laois in the Ossory diocese.  In 739, he left Ireland for the Holy Land with two companions, Dobdagrecc and Sidonius.  At first, they worked under King Pepin in France.  In 745, Pepin commended them to his brother-in-law, Duke Odilo of Bavaria, who sent them to St Peter's Abbey in Salzburg.

 Fergal became Abbot of St Peter's.  He declined the episcopacy on the grounds of humility - Dobdagrecc, now Abbot of Chiemsee, was consecrated instead.  Actually, Fergal implemented an Irish hierarchical model where the bishop was subject to the abbot.  In Irish Church politics, Fergal was a conservative with little time for Roman innovations regarding the Easter date or ecclesiastical jurisdiction.  The liturgy in Salzburg under Fergal included commemoration of the 15 Abbots of Iona from St Colmcille down to the contemporary abbot; and he brought relics of St Brigid and St Samthann of Clonbroney with him, inspiring devotion to the two in what is now Austria - the latter virtually forgotten in her own country.

St Boniface was unimpressed by Fergal's arrival in Salzburg.  Odilo had promoted Fergal over Boniface's candidate.  This was a challenge to Boniface's acknowledged German primacy.  Boniface has been accused of racism in his opposition to Fergal and some have suggested this clash of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic temperaments foreshadows future enmity between Ireland and England.  Boniface (né Wynfrith) came from Crediton, Devonshire, not far from the border between Celtic Cornwall and Saxon Wessex and he displayed no affection for his Cornish neighbours.  But he had many Irish monks working under him, two of whom were martyred with him in 754.

We might call Boniface an ultramontanist today.  Fergal may have had Gallican tendencies, but he was so from traditionalist grounds.  Tháinig idir Pheadar agus Phól - the Irish proverb tells us even the apostles Peter and Paul quarrelled.  The two had inevitable disagreements: each suspected the other of heresy.  Boniface knew of Fergal's leanings, but needed something more substantial to go to Rome.

The first occasion Boniface went to Pope St Zachary I concerned the sacrament of baptism.  Two Bavarian priests under Fergal's jurisdiction baptised catechumens with this apparently feminine formula: Baptizo te in nomine patria et filia et spiritu sancta.  This was ignorance, but when Boniface insisted the candidates be re-baptised, Fergal and Sidonius upheld the validity of the sacrament.  Boniface denounced them to Zachary.  The pope confirmed the baptisms were valid and rebuked Boniface instead.
Clash over geography
Fergal had been known for his interest in the natural sciences even in Aghaboe and he engaged in some scientific speculation.  Boniface believed Fergal overstepped the mark, as he appeared to suggest men inhabited the Antipodes.

The confrontation between Boniface and Fergal over geography is still relevant to Catholic apologetics as it deals with the relationship between faith and science.  Anticlerical polemicists hold the Church was staffed by flat-earthers until Columbus' day, by geocentrists until Galileo's and that now, at best, we grudgingly accept evolution (less of a problem for Catholics than sola scriptura Protestants, but this writer needs to see more evidence for macro-evolution). 

Adherents of scientism put the Columbus and Gallileo cases very disingenuously. The objection to Columbus was not that the world was flat but that the round world was a lot bigger than he thought it was.  Columbus extimated Japan was 2,800 miles from Spain.  It is in fact 14,000 miles distant.  Were it not for the hitherto unknown Americas, Columbus and his crew would have died at sea.  As Luther and Calvin's attacks on Father Copernicus trouble nobody, the anticlerical faction point at Gallileo, omitting some details.

Firstly, the Church wrongly accepted the consensus of leading contemporary scientists that the universe was geocentric.  Secondly, Gallileo unwisely strayed into philosophy and theology in self-defence.  This implied the Church herself was heretical and thus brought the Inquisition on to his own case.

Regarding evolution, the only facet of the subject I know anything about is linguistic evolution.  Asked to believe our complex languages developed from animal grunts when all the evidence shows language simplifies over time, I apply Occam's razor and find the Tower of Babel story more credible.  However Occam's razor was first wielded not by the English Francisan William of Occam but by his contemporary, the Anglo-Norman Archbishop of Armagh, Richard Fitzralph, formally canonised by the Church of Ireland in Henry VIII's day as St Richard of Dundalk.  But all this was in the future.
Excommunication threat 
The showdown between Boniface and Fergal anticipated some aspects of the Gallileo case.  Even in the eighth century, thinking people accepted the world was round.  This proposition went back to Greek times.  The problem was to state that men lived in the Antipodes.  Pope Zachary told Boniface that if Fergal taught there were another sun, another moon and another race of men on the other side of the Earth, he would convene a council to investigate Fergal - and if it found him guilty of teaching heresy, he would be deprived of his priesthood and excommunicated.

Greek science held the world was round, but that the equator was in the Torrid Zone, a region of uncrossable heat.  The intelligentsia held this view, and also that no descendent of Adam could have traversed this divide.  This made the premise appear unbiblical: if there were a race of men on the far side, from whom were they descended?

To bring this into the 21st century, many people have an uninformed belief about the possibility of life on other planets.  As it is highly improbable (I gave up using the term impossible a long time ago) that sons of Adam reached hypothetical life-sustaining planets elsewhere in the universe, one must conclude that any alien race differs in lineage.
The shots in Fergal's locker
C.S. Lewis, Irish Anglicanism's foremost apologist, suggested there might be life on other planets, which had not experienced the Fall.  This was the challenge facing Fergal now.  Did he posit there was another race of men on the other side of the world?  Did they experience the Fall and Redemption?  Simply put, the problem was not scientific but theological, though it only arose in the context of accepted science.

So Fergal had to account for this problem before the Pope.  This is where the saint's erudition came into play.  When Ptolomy insisted Africa could not be circumnavigated, he was reacting to an account in Heredotus that Phoenician sailors had already achieved this in the reign of Pharoah Necho, an adversary of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.  Modern research has confirmed both the possibility and plausibility of Heredotus' account of this incredible seventh century BC voyage.  Other accounts hinting at undiscovered countries south of the equator exist in Greek and in the eighth century, Ireland led the west in its knowledge of Greek.

Someone of Fergal's learning and interests would have been aware of this corpus as well as extensive writings in Irish and Hiberno-Latin on the same topic.  The Navigatio Brendani is the best known, but it is not unique.   Like the tale from Heredotus, it was only conclusively shown to be possible in the 20th century.  The Venerable Bede, St Isidore of Seville and St Jerome all mention the Antipodes.  It was on the authority of the latter that St Fergal based his defence.

There was a work in circulation at the time named the Cosmographia by Aethicus Ister.  This alluded to life in the Antipodes in sections attributed to St Jerome, though Jerome's authorship of any of the book is now disputed.  Fergal returned to Salzburg vindicated, but many now hold he was the sole author of the Cosmographia, which is also unlikely. 
First Austrian school
Fergal was eventually consecrated as Archbishop of Salzburg in 766.  He astonished his contemporaries by undertaking a 33 by 66 metre cathedral in 769 which was completed in 774.  Following Irish practice, he established a cathedral school.  This was the first known school on what is now Austrian territory and its foundation precedes the Bavarian Council's decree on schools in 774.

At this stage, Fergal was well advanced in what proved to be his life's work: the conversion of the Slavs in the Carinthian Alps.  This area, inhabited by peoples we now call Slovenes, extended from southern Austria to Slovenia to northeastern Italy.

The Slavs came into contact with Christianity as they moved westward.  St Columbanus preached to them in the seventh century.  Fergal began his earnest mission.  He baptised Duke Chetimar in Chiemsee.  He consecrated Modestus and sent him with 13 companions to Carinthia.  Modestus established his diocese at Maria Saal, dying in 763, but Fergal continued to supervise the missionary work until his own death.

After that, not even a heathen rebellion following Chetimar's death could reverse evangelisation.  Fergal's successor Arno came to an agreement with Patriarch Paulinus II of Aquileia on diocesan boundaries enabling the completion of this work, but Fergal was known as the Apostle of Carinthia ever after.  He also sent missionaries to many unknown parts - including what is now Hungary.

Fergal maintained an active life into old age, falling ill while preaching near the River Dravo in Carinthia.  He died on November 27, 784.  He might well have been forgotten as Bavaria was absorbed into the Frankish kingdom in 788.  However, St Fergal's tomb was rediscovered when the cathedral was destroyed in 1181.  This renewed interest and devotion to the dead archbishop who was canonised by Pope Gregory IX in 1233.  More relics of St Fergal were discovered after the Allied bombing of Salzburg during the Second World War.  His feast is on 27 November, though some Germany dioceses commemorate him with St Rupert on September 24.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 77, March-April 2005

Judging Latin Book by "Coptic" Cover

JUDGING LATIN BOOK BY ‘COPTIC’ COVER
by PEADAR LAIGHLÉIS

Ex Aegypto vocavi filium meum (Matt 2, 15, cf Num 23, 22)

Treasure from the Bog: Uncovering the Mysteries of the Fadden More Psalter. RTÉ/National Museum of Ireland. 52 Minutes

ONE OF THE most remarkable discoveries of the past decade was the Psalter uncovered in the bogin Fadden More, North Tipperary in July 2006. The Psalter is dated from approximately 800 and is one of the very few books of its age preserved with its original binding intact. The conservation of the manuscript is largely down to the painstaking labour over a few years of John Gillis of Trinity College, Dublin. The television film under review was very interesting and showed the identification and the preservation of the psalter in an entertaining manner. From this point of view, it is well worth a viewing. The contributions of the various scholars are enlightening, though I wonder why Thomas Cahill, author of the feel-good book How the Irish Saved Civilisation was chosen as an interviewee.

It was necessary for the programme to contextualise the discovery in the Irish Church of the day. Though I would have differences in emphases with some of the scholars who spoke, there was nothing misleading presented in the course of the show by any of the academics or Museum archaeologists interviewed. I would have more problems with the type of conclusion drawn by the producer voiced by the narrator.
The first papyrus
To come to the point, the attention focussed on one very important feature. When the bulk of the work was done, it was discovered that the inside of the binding was the first discovery in Ireland of papyrus. This was not to be expected given the climate in Ireland. Egypt’s dry climate is ideal for papyrus; this is found less commonly and in poor condition on the continent; and in Ireland, it was never found at all until this one case. In the course of his conservation work, Mr Gillis visited San Gallen to view similar manuscripts. Following the confirmation that the cover of the psalter did indeed contain papyrus, he went to the Coptic museum in Egypt to examine their book-binding practices, which were remarkably similar. Which prompted the deduction that definite proof connected the early Irish Church with the Coptic Church of Egypt.
 

First we need to be careful about the noun Copt.  It is derived from the Arabic qubt, which is based on the Greek word for Egyptian, Αἰγύτιοι. The Copts are ethnic Egyptians where as most Egyptian Moslems are Arabs in origin. In time this came to have a particular denominational meaning. The Coptic Church is monophysite: it holds that Christ has one nature. There is some diversion as to whether this means that Christ was solely divine or whether by nature was a fusion between the divine and the human, but essentially it believes Christ has no separate human nature. It is noteworthy that the Director of the National Museum, Dr Patrick Wallace was much more nuanced in his approach and spoke of the “monastic church of Egypt”. Though the monophysite position was defined by the Council of Chalcedon in 450 and debated long before that, it took centuries to take shape and it was some time before it was a unanimous position among Egyptian Christians. Likewise, RTÉ uses the term “Roman Catholicism” to refer to a denomination which has never described itself as Roman Catholic. Initially the Church used the designation “Great Church” and after the Great Schism, the western Church referred to itself as Latin Christendom. The term Roman Catholic seems to have been invented by Anglican theologians to designate the Catholic Church as it became after the reformation.  So the application of either term in the context of either Ireland or Egypt in the early ninth century can be misleading.
Desert Fathers
Even without the trace of the papyrus in the manuscript, we can say that there was an Egyptian influence on the early Irish church. The early Church in Egypt left a mark on all Christianity, or at least on any Christian denomination with a role for monasticism. This would exclude most of the Protestant world, but from the High Church wings of the Anglican and Lutheran communions through to the Assyrian Church of the East, there is a plethora of churches in which monasticism has a central importance.  This has been the case since St Anthony of Egypt became the first monk in the third century, following the example of St Paul of Thebes, who was the first acknowledged hermit. Both men were venerated in Ireland, appearing in literature, on high crosses and in many other contexts which marks their special significance. There is no doubt that the spirituality of the Desert Fathers made a deep impression on the Irish Church, which developed as a strongly monastic church to an extent that it took until the 12th century to set up an universally accepted diocesan structure, paving the way for the episcopal church we are acustomed to now. In this way, one appreciates the claims of Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox (i.e. Churches which reject the Council of Chalcedon on various grounds, and who are not in communion with Constantinople nor Moscow; nor necessarily with each other) that the early Irish church was one of them more than similar assertions from Anglicans or Presbyterians.

Of course the development of the Irish Church, and the Egyptian influence on it, was a lot more complex. Firstly, geographical and political factors played a part. In the absence of towns, Ireland was more suited to the development monasteries associated with the tribal federations who ruled Ireland. The Desert Fathers provided a tremendous inspiration in the absence of a cult of martyrs. But the most important source of this influence was not directly from Egypt, but through the Church in Gaul. Gaul was a centre of Greek and Alexandrian influence up to and after the evangelisation of Ireland and figures such as St Martin of Tours bowed to the example of Ss Paul and Anthony. The life of St Martin by Sulpicius Severus was as widely read as the life of St Anthony by St Athanasius. St Patrick was considered the nephew of St Martin, as he was also believed to be St Mel’s uncle. To understand this, we have to understand the importance of the nephew in Irish ideology, specifically the “sister’s son”. Cú Chulainn was the son of Conchobair MacNessa’s sister, as many of the heroes had this relationship with the kings they served, so the poetry of Bláthmac, an eighth century monk, explains the incarnation in terms of Christ being the “sister’s son” of all mankind, the nephew of Man.  The early Irish monks did not literally believe St Martin was St Patrick’s uncle, but rather used the relationship to stress the spiritual descent of the first patron. In other words, that Irish Christianity was derived from Gaul.
Egyptian influence in perspective
This is not to deny the Egyptian influence, but rather to put it in perspective. As Gaul suffered the barbarian assaults (already evident in St Patrick’s lifetime), Gaul became less important and the Irish Church developed a life of its own which would gradually spread through the whole of Europe. It continued to take inspiration from Egypt and elsewhere, Syria and Armenia included. But this appeal was not unique to Ireland. St Anthony was venerated across Europe at the time. St Augustine, mentions both Ss Paul and Anthony in his Confessions and very much imitates them in his monastic legacy. Many centuries after the decline of the Coptic Church, the Russian monastic pioneers imitated the desert spirituality in Russia’s vast wilderness. Though Ireland had no desert, the old Irish dísert came to mean a retreat away from population. But we would get a wrong impression to think this was unique to Ireland, even n the Latin West.

The Egyptian church found other ways of expanding its influence. First of all, Egyptians who accepted the hypostatic union had to go elsewhere. Secondly, Egypt’s monasteries became the prey of multiple attacks from pre-Islamic Arab raiders from the fourth century on. Finally, the Islamicised Arabs supplanted Egyptian autonomy and very soon, the Copts were a minority in their own country. All this meant that there was a steady stream of refugees from Egypt and some of these found there way to Ireland.
Oriental influences
The appearance of a Coptic cover on an Irish psalter is nothing which should cause surprise. The blue pigmentation in other manuscripts is lapis lazuli, which is imported from the Middle East. No one suggests a strong Persian influence in Irish Christianity though. The more important point is that the Fadden More Psalter, like the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow, is written in Latin, as are all texts of the canonical scripture or liturgical importance, together with a great deal of sacred and secular literature in contemporary Ireland. One could argue about the knowledge of Greek in Ireland of the time. There is no doubt that it was known and that it was probably more widely known here than elsewhere in the West, but it never assumed anything near like the importance that Latin had. In this context, it is harder to make a strong case for a particularly close link between Ireland and the Churches of the East, exclusive of any relationship with our sister Churches in the West.

Nevertheless, the programme made one important point. Christianity was established in the Middle East and in its early centuries was divided over three continents. As such it was far from a uniform body, which meant that a church in the far West such as Ireland could absorb oriental influences in addition to the Latin and Gallican stamp that was left on the church. But the programme makers were unable to bring the consequences of this home. In the first place, building so much around the fall of Rome in 476, when the eastern Christian world would say that the Roman Empire continued to exist until 1453, was very much in keeping with the western view of history.  It is interesting nonetheless that everyone accepts the decline of Rome in secular terms from the late fifth century and few correlate this to the increasing importance of the Roman Church through the same period. Secondly, though the programme stated the Coptic Church is thriving, it did not acknowledge the difficulties faced by Copts in their home country right up to the recent martyrdoms in Libya nor the even worse situation of Christians of ancient churches in other Islamic countries. A Christianity which flourished while our own ancestors worshipped idols was to disintegrate due to internal dissension and external persecution over many centuries. It is certain that these churches, particularly that of Egypt, left a mark on the Irish Church among other churches. But it would be a mistake to assume that this was a pre-eminent influence above all others. That is what the programme tries to do.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 136, January-February 2015

Has St Brigid Gone the Way of the Enneagram?

HAS ST BRIGID GONE THE WAY OF THE ENNEAGRAM?
By FATHER DÁITHÍ Ó MURCHÚ

From one point of view, the Enneagram can be seen as a set of nine distinct personality types, with each number on the Enneagram denoting one type. It is common to find a little of yourself in all nine of the types, although one of them should stand out as being closest to yourself. This is your basic personality type.—The Enneagram Institute, 2004

I REMEMBER in the seminary having to sit through a workshop on the Enneagram as described above; that a Catholic Seminary would engage in an exercise that finds its source in ancient Sufi mysticism is alarming indeed.

That this was seen as beneficial, normal even, is very telling. In the years since I am astounded how so many Catholic Retreat Houses, Convents, Religious Houses and Parish Centres offer not only the Enneagram but a myriad of events that are completely out of sync with and injurious towards Catholic teaching.

Now what has all this to do with Saint Brigid? Let me begin by quoting an article by Brian Wright (2010) in History Ireland:

Brigid, goddess and saint, the second most important Irish saint after Patrick, is well known not only in Ireland but also in many other parts of the world. Thousands of books and articles have been written about this influential figure since the first by Cogitosus c. AD 650. Yet some historians have claimed she did not even exist! Brigid is unique in still being venerated not only as a saint but also as a goddess.

So where does the idea of Brigid as goddess and saint come from? There are both ancient and modern reasons, and the two are interlinked. The ancient reasons date back to the Celtic Feast of Imbolg. The Bath Chronicle (2007) in a features article put it very well:

Our ancestors welcomed Imbolg as the reawakening of life. As the first crocus pushed through the earth, it was seen as the first sign that winter was stirring from her sleep. It is a time to look to the future.

It was common practice for the Christian church to Christianise pagan feasts on the conversion of the populace in a region. This canny piece of marketing and evangelisation meant that the people did not lose their important calendar dates, but had their god/ gods/ idols replaced with the one true God. It also meant that the previous feast days would not be left in situ to tempt the people to return to them. Three classic examples of this would be the Feasts of Christmas, the Annunciation and Saint John the Baptist taking place around the dates of the winter and summer solstice and the spring equinox.
Canny evangelisation
In the case of St Brigid, the Feast of Imbolg became her feast day. It was an inspired choice to Christianise the pagan feast of spring for the woman who would become Ireland’s secondary patron, and to have it as a prelude to the Feast of Candlemas. The life of Brigid was marked by Paschal joy, the fire lit at her monastery in Kildare exemplifying this. She, with Saint Patrick and Colmcille, would become figureheads for the fervour with which the Irish people embraced Christianity and brought it to the ends of the earth. As Irish children the stories of her life that we learnt were indeed the stuff of miracles, from her birth in Faughart, County Louth to Dubhtach a chieftain and Brocca the former slave, her mother, who was baptised by Saint Patrick, to the conversion of the pagan chieftain by picking up the rushes on the floor and weaving them into a cross to tell him the story of Christ and His death on the cross.

We made the crosses every year in school, and brought them home as a beautiful reminder of our nation’s heritage and the ever present power of the cross. We learnt about the principal foundation, mentioned above, of Brigid at Kildare or Cill Dara, the Church of the Oak. This latter event is the basis for my own personal favourite story where Brigid asked the local chieftain for the land and he refused. Eventually she asked him for as much land as her cloak would cover, and, laughing at the supposed ludicrous nature of such a request, he agreed, only to witness Brigid’s cloak spreading and growing, eventually covering the area she desired. We saw St. Brigid’s crosses over doorways, heard of them in rafters of houses, and how, on the eve of St. Brigid’s Day, if you hung the cross over the door of the byre Brigid would bless your land and cattle. There was also the belief that hanging a cloth outside on the eve of the feast would allow Brigid to touch it, and so give it curative powers.

It is very easy to see the fantastical in the above tales, also the rubrics of pagan ritual and Celtic culture. Fire, one of the elements, is an ancient ritualistic symbol predating Christianity. Miraculous events and magical powers are seen in the cloak story, and the invocation of protection on crops, land, houses and livestock garners another facet of the same. The St. Brigid’s cloth has an echo of the clootie tree, which Lyndsay McEwen (2009) describes: In different parts of Britain, Ireland and northern Europe, there is a tradition of fastening a piece of cloth to trees (usually hawthorn) near holy wells. After taking the water people tie a piece of their clothing to the tree. The tree is a symbol of long life and health. In Scotland these are known as clootie (cloth) trees.

These then are the ancient reasons for how Brigid as goddess and saint came to be. We can see the ingredients of both and how they came to be interlinked. We see ultimately how the two were not uncomfortable bedfellows, and how, in the telling, the story of the Christian Brigid was not uncomfortable with the blurring of the demarcation line, but embraced it, Christianised it and cleverly used it to bring a newly converted people along holding ribbons of their past ideology to give them comfort in embracing the new beliefs.

When it comes to the modern reasons, what has happened in the last fifty years is a lot of the old certainties have crumbled, and the structures of Catholicism have been shaken, as the Post-Conciliar Church has sought to engage with the modern world, and examine new ways to live the life of faith. The misinterpretation of this concept has been a fiasco for the church, as the baby has often been thrown out with the bathwater, and the dialogue has led, in many instances, to an abandonment of traditional rituals and an embracing of new points of reference which are not only not compatible with Catholicism but sow confusion and a distrust of all that went before. In the midst of this we have the results of the new moral order which put down roots at the very time of the Second Vatican Council, the permissive society of the 1960s with its promotion of free love and an enthusiasm for eastern philosophies.
Brigid the goddess
Brigid has been a victim of this confusion particularly since, in the last twenty years, there has been a renewed interest in Celtic belief systems, and so we now, tragically, have Brigid, not as Muire na nGael or Mary of the Irish, but Brigid the feminist, the goddess, the Brigid who may not even have existed, the Brigid who the cruel church debased of her Celtic powers and fabricated into a coy and demure nun, rather the same as they are purported to have done with Mary Magdalene in Dan Brown’s infamous novel, The Da Vinci Code. The old tale of St. Mel ordaining Brigid a bishop has surfaced as an argument for the ordination of women, and as proof of a Pre-Roman influenced Celtic church free from ultramontane oppression. In short, Brigid has been stripped of her Christian elements and become a cause célèbre of the confused mentality and belief systems of our time.

In conclusion then, can we say, as we set out to at the beginning, that she has gone the way of the Enneagram? It would certainly seem so. The brassy madam presented to the world today bears no resemblance to the Brigid I learnt about in school who found her strength in the power that came from God alone. This imposter would seem more comfortable consulting her crystals than the Blessed Sacrament. Therein, however, may be the answer or at least the consolation. This Brigid is exactly that, an imposter, wearing the cloak of modernity rather than the cloak of Christ. We need to reclaim her to what she was before this silliness. The Church needs to rescue her and present her anew to a world that needs her gifts now more than ever, particularly her giftedness in confronting a pagan world, not unlike our own in its barbarity, with the truth in Christ, the truth in love.

Brigid, Muire na nGael, pray for us.

Bibliography
McEwen, Lyndsay. Clootie Tree? What is it? (2009)Available: http://www.clootietree.co /whats_a_clootie_tree.htm. Last accessed 15th Nov 2013.

Pontifical Council for Culture/Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (2003). Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian reflection on the “New Age”. Available: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.htmlhttp://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.html.. Last accessed 13th November 2013.

The Bath Chronicle. (2007). Light candles for the coming year. The Bath Chronicle. 247 (30), 22.

The Enneagram Institute. (2013). How the Enneagram System Works. Available: http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/intro.asp#.UoOiN3C-06Y. Last accessed 13th November 2013.

Wright, Brian. (2010). “Did St Brigid visit Glastonbury?” History Ireland. 18 (1), p14-17.

An tAthair Dáithí Ó Murchú is a priest of the Galway, Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora Diocese currently on loan to the Wrexham Diocese in Wales.

The Brandsma Review, Issue 130, January-February 2014