St Patrick the (almost) Protestant Missionary
I am a servant of Christ to a foreign nation for the unspeakable glory of life everlasting which is in Jesus Christ our Lord. – Patrick
Aside from being more Protestant* than Catholic, and being British, not Irish, Patty was also a bit of a maverick when it came to methodology and practice – according to Mark Driscoll. I wonder how those that have a slightly pietistic view of St Patrick would receive his like today? I think I, and you, already know the answer.
Saint Patrick is not even a saint, as he was never canonized by the Roman Catholic Church. Additionally, Patrick was not even Irish. Rather, he was a Roman-Britain who spoke Latin and a bit of Welsh.
Patrick’s unorthodox ministry methods, which had brought so much fruit among the Irish, also brought much opposition from the Roman Catholic Church. Because Patrick was so far removed from Roman civilization and church polity he was seen by some as an instigator of unwelcome changes. This led to great conflicts between the Roman and Celtic Christians. The Celtic Christians had their own calendar and celebrated Easter a week earlier than their Roman counterparts. Additionally, the Roman monks shaved only the hair on the top of their head, whereas the Celtic monks shaved all of their hair except their long locks which began around the bottom of their head as a funky monk mullet. The Romans considered these and other variations by the Celtic Christian leaders to be acts of insubordination. In the end, the Roman Church should have learned from Patrick, who is one of the greatest missionaries who has ever lived. Though Patrick’s pastors and churches looked different in method, they were very orthodox in their theology and radically committed to such things as Scripture and the Trinity.
Thanks to Mark and The Resurgence team for putting together this post and others in their Vintage Saints series.
NB: post edit: In the interests of fairness and accuracy. Driscoll doesn’t say Patrick is a Protestant. I use this term in it’s purest sense, not in the sense that he was a child of the Protestant Reformation. He was, rather orthodox, bible & gospel focused in his message, methods and ministry – which for all intended purposes makes him more “protestant” than many today who are not part of Roman Catholicism.
I had originally titled the post as “St Patrick the Protestant Missionary” – while Patrick was a proto-type of the later protestants, to call him such is anachronistic and, well, wrong. As picked up on by Rich in the comments below.
Was St. Patrick Catholic?
by James Akin
Patrick was born in 385 western Great Britain into a high-ranking Roman Christian family; he died in Ireland in 461, though some accounts put his death later. His grandfather was a priest and his father–Calpurnius–was a deacon, as well as prosperous nobleman and local Roman official. Patrick’s native language was Latin.
His birth name was, reportedly, Maewyn, and the Latin name Patercius (Gaelicized to “Patrick” by the Irish) was given to him by Pope Celestine just before his mission to Ireland, as a token of the fruitfulness of his future mission, which would make him the pater civium (father of the people) of the Irish race.
He writes that as youths he and his companions “turned away from God, and did not keep his commandments, and did not obey our priests, who used to remind us of our salvation” (Conf. 1). But when he was sixteen he was kidnapped by Irish pirates and sold into slavery, where he served as a shepherd. This revolutionized his life; his faith and zeal for God were ignited, and he spent much time praying and fasting. After six years, he escaped, being led by private revelations along a safe route back to Britain. Afterwards, he was commissioned in another private revelation to serve as a missionary to Ireland.
To prepare, he traveled to France and spent around two decades as a monk—studying, praying, and practicing penance. He was ordained to the priesthood, and in 432 was sent to Ireland to serve St. Palladius, who had been consecrated bishop and sent to Ireland by Pope Celestine. When Palladius died on a trip to Britain, Patrick was chosen as his successor and was consecrated bishop by St. Germanus, the papal representative overseeing the Irish mission.
Patrick experienced enormous success in converting the Irish, and three assistant bishops from France were sent to help him, among them St. Sechnall (aka Secundinus). Within his generation the Irish had been transformed by God’s grace into a Christian (and Catholic) people.
In 441 Patrick went to Rome to seek special approval of his ministry in Ireland, and the newly-elected Pope Leo the Great personally confirmed Patrick’s full adherence to the Catholic faith. This is significant since some today assert that Patrick was not Catholic. In this country, the challenge is mainly made by Irish Americans who have abandoned the Church for Protestantism and wish to co-opt Patrick and represent him as a non-Catholic figure.
This is an impossible task, as Patrick was a Latin-speaking Roman noble, grandson of a Catholic priest, son of a minor official of the Roman empire, who had repeated private revelations, practiced penance, spent two decades as a monk, was ordained a priest and sent to serve on the papal mission to Ireland, was then ordained bishop by a papal representative, and had his fidelity to Catholic teaching specially confirmed by Pope Leo the Great (of whom the fathers of the Council of Chalcedon cried “Peter has spoken through Leo!”). He described himself as a Catholic, and a list of canons he drew up for the Irish church orders that any dispute not resolved on a local level was to be forwarded to Rome for decision.
The two writings from his pen that survive—his Confession and Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus—are both in Latin, and both attest to his Catholic faith. The Letter—which Patrick wrote in a blazing fury after some of his newly baptized converts had been slaughtered during a raid by a British ruler—records his belief in the episcopacy, the ministerial priesthood, confirmation, the value of monks and nuns, purgatory, priestly absolution, and “doing hard penance” (the last two, he said the murdering soldiers needed). His later Confession has a mild tone (not being a response to a massacre) and mentions many of the same Catholic distinctives, as well as fasting, loss of salvation, and Patrick’s many private revelations. Another important source is a Latin hymn written in praise of him by his assistant bishop Sechnall, who records many of Patrick’s beliefs, among them the sacrifice of the Mass, merits, the fact the Church is built on Peter, and baptismal regeneration.
Any disgruntled claims that Patrick was not Catholic are just blarney.
(A version of this article appears in the March 1997 issue of This Rock magazine.)
Some Quotes
St. Patrick
“I, Patrick, the sinner, am the most rustic and the least of all the faithful . . . had for my father Calpornius, a deacon, a son of Potitus, a priest, who belonged to the village of Bannavem Taberniae. . . . At that time I was barely sixteen years of age . . . and I was led into captivity in Ireland with many thousands of persons, in accordance with our deserts, for we turned away from God, and kept not his commandments, and were not obedient to our priests, who were wont to admonish us for our salvation” (Confession of St. Patrick 1 [A.D. 452]).
“And there truly [in Ireland] one night I heard in my sleep a voice saying to me, ‘You fast well; soon you will go to your fatherland.’ And again, after I very short time, I heard the heavenly voice saying to me, ‘Lo, your ship is ready.’ And it was not near at hand, but was distant, perhaps two hundred miles. And I had never been there, nor did I know any person living there. And thereupon I shortly took flight and left the man with whom I had been for six years. And I came in the strength of God, who prospered my way for good; and I met with nothing to alarm me until I reached that ship” (ibid., 17 [A.D. 452]).
“And once more, after a few years, I was in Britain with my family. . . . And there indeed I saw in a vision of the night a man whose name was Victoricus coming as it were from Ireland with countless letters. He gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of the letter, which was entitled ‘The Voice of the Irish.’ And while I was reading aloud the beginning of the letter, I thought that at that very moment I heard the voices of those who dwelt beside the Wood of Foclut [in Ireland], which is nigh unto the Western Sea. And thus they cried, as with one mouth, ‘We beseech you, holy youth, to come and walk once more among us!” (ibid., 23).
“And especially there was one blessed lady of Scotic birth, of noble rank, and most beautiful, of full age [i.e., an adult], who I had baptized. And after a few days she came to us for a special counsel. She told us in confidence that she had received a message from God, and it admonished her to become a virgin of Christ [i.e. a nun] and so come nearer to God. Thanks be to God, on the sixth day afterwards, most admirably and most eagerly she embraced that which all virgins of Christ do” (ibid., 42).
“Let those who will, laugh and mock. I shall not be silent nor conceal the signs and wonders which were shown to me by the Lord many years before they came to pass, since he knows all things even before the world’s beginnings” (ibid., 45).
“I, Patrick, the sinner, unlearned as everybody knows, avow that I have been established a bishop in Ireland. Most assuredly I believe that I have received from God what I am. And so I dwell in the midst of barbarous heaths, a stranger and an exile for the love of God” (Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus 1 [A.D. 452]).
“[The murderer] Coroticus . . . fears neither God nor his priests, whom he [God] chose and to whom he granted that highest, divine, and sublime power, that whom they should bind on earth should be bound in heaven” (ibid., 6 [A.D. 452]).
St. Sechnall
“Hear, all you who love God, the holy merits of Patrick the bishop, a man blessed in Christ; how, for his good deeds, he is likened unto the angels and, for his perfect life, he is comparable to the apostles” (Hymn in Praise of St. Patrick 1 [A.D. 444]).
“Steadfast in the fear of God, and in faith immovable, upon [St. Patrick] as upon Peter the [Irish] church is built; and he has been allotted his apostleship by God; against him the gates of hell prevail not” (ibid., 3 [A.D. 444]).
“[St. Patrick] boldly proclaims to the [Irish] tribes the Name of the Lord, to whom he gives the eternal grace of the laver of salvation; for their offenses he prays daily unto God; for them also he offers up to God worthy sacrifices” (ibid., 13 [A.D. 444]).
http://jimmyakin.com/was-st-patrick-catholic
This is pure fantasy.
Certainly, St. Patrick most likely practiced Christianity in the style of both Roman Britain and France, as he was tonsured in Southern France.
Patrick wasn’t “formally” canonized by the Latins because there was no such process at the time of St. Patrick’s life and he was accepted as a saint before the process was created by the Bishop of Rome in the 13th Century, 700 years after St. Patrick went to Ireland. That argument would remove the overwhelming majority of saints from the Roman Catholic calendar. I find it humorous the Protestants feel the need to make up pretend rules for Roman Catholics, and they have quite a few that are very ridiculous. You don’t need to make up fake ones.
St. Patrick is also in the rubrics of most Eastern Orthodox churches, as he was a saint before Rome’s schism.
Concerning Celtic Christianity, claiming it was more Protestant is patently false, although it was quite different from the practices imposed later by Rome. As all liturgical and traditional practices, it also developed over time and was not an invention by St. Patrick. This included a calculation for the date of Easter that differed from both Rome and the other patriarchates. Humorously, Protestants still date Easter (Pascha) on the calculations of Rome, not the Eastern churches and certainly not using the Insular Christian tradition.
So please don’t go around saying he was actually Protestant, when he was clearly nothing of the sort. I would be curious to know from this author if he followed Calvin or Arminius, who both live a millennia after St. Patrick died.
Believe what you believe based on what you know to be true. If you need to find “proof” of your rightness by inventing a fantasy past or fabricating rules for other churches, you’re probably wrong and you probably know it.