Posted on 03/16/2015 8:16:21 AM PDT by John Leland 1789
Our Catholic friends won’t like this revelation but facts are facts. Patrick (original name was Sucat) was born in Scotland about 375 AD and lived about 85 years dying in 460. As a teen he was captured by marauding raiders and taken to Ireland where he was sold to Milcho, a Druid chieftain and held in slavery for six years. Patrick said that he was hungry and naked during that time. He eventually walked 200 miles to the Irish coast to escape and to find his way back to Scotland.
It is my desire to dispel the myths, delusions, superstitions and lies that are circulating about Patrick. Of course, he did not drive the snakes out of Ireland but his preaching of Christ drove out the pagan Druids and removed human sacrifice; also, his assistants in his “monastery” copied and preserved the Bible and standard texts for us to peruse today. All this while the Roman Empire was crumbling and the dark ages were falling upon Europe and the Roman Church gained more and more power and riches.
Patrick was reared in a Christian home and his father was a deacon in an evangelical (or Baptistic) church. Also, his grandfather pastored in these ancient churches of Britain which had never come under the Roman yoke. An historian wrote more than a hundred years ago, "...the truth which saved him when a youthful slave in pagan Ireland was taught him in the godly home of...his father." Under that Christian influence Patrick felt called to go back to Ireland as a missionary to convert those pagan Druids who had enslaved him!
He became one of the most effective missionaries of all time, some think, only second to the Apostle Paul! He refused to take gifts from kings and preached to everyone about the grace of God. Patrick wrote that he “baptized thousands of people,” ordained men to the ministry, counseled and won wealthy women, and sons of kings and trained them for Christian service. He refused to be paid for baptizing people, ordaining preachers, and even paid for the gifts he gave to kings.
He was legally without protection since he refused the patronage of kings and was beaten, robbed, and put in chains. He says that he was also held captive for 60 days but gives no details. It is only natural that the nascent but growing Roman Church would claim him but it was and is a bogus claim. One historian wrote, "Rome's most audacious theft was when she seized bodily the Apostle Peter and made him the putative head and founder of her system; but next to that brazen act stands her effrontery when she 'annexed' the great missionary preacher of Ireland and enrolled him among her saints." Well said.
Baptists should appreciate the fact that Catholics pay homage to him, even build churches in his honor; however, it is time to realize that Patrick was only a very simple, even untrained Baptist preacher. He was not interested in power or position or possessions but in preaching the simple Gospel of Christ. From my study of him, he would be embarrassed and chagrined that a day in his honor is often turned into a drunken orgy as in Rio and New Orleans.
The early non-Catholic Churches were not called “Baptist” but most preached, practiced, and professed what modern Baptists do. If Patrick had been a Roman Catholic then somewhere there would be support for that, but there is none. Patrick wrote Confession, or Epistle to the Irish and Epistle to Coroticus and in neither did he refer to Rome. The Breastplate, a hymn is also attributed to him. Not one of his early biographers mentions any Roman connection. Moreover, there is no support for the claim that Pope Celistine sent him to the Irish people.
Furthermore, during his life, the Roman Church was only in embryo form. The Bishop of Rome was not considered the authoritarian he became much later. In fact, church authority was split in five directions: the Patriarchs at Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria all claimed to have as much authority as the Roman Bishop!
Professor George T. Stokes, a prominent scholar, declared that before the synod of Rathbresail in A.D. 1112, the rule of each Irish Church was independent, autonomous, and "...dioceses and diocesan episcopacy had no existence at all."
Neander’s History of the Christian Church says that the facts “prove the origin of the [Irish] church was independent of Rome, and must be traced solely to the people of Britain... Again, no indication of his connection with the Romish church is to be found in his confession; rather everything seems to favor the supposition that he was ordained bishop in Britain itself."
Odriscol, who, incidentally, was an Irish Catholic, in his work entitled, Views of Ireland, reveals: "The Christian church of that country, as founded by St. Patrick and his predecessors, existed for many ages, free and unshackelled. For 700 years this church maintained its independence. It had no connection with England and differed on points of importance with Rome." That’s from an Irish Catholic!
Another Irish scholar wrote that "...Leo II was bishop of Rome from 440 to 461 A.D. and upwards of one hundred and forty of his letters to correspondents in all parts of Christendom still remain and yet he never mentions Patrick or his work, or in any way intimates that he knew of the great work being done there." So, until after 461, the Roman Church had not tried to make Patrick as one of their major “saints.”
Furthermore, the Venerable Bede (Father of English History) did not refer to Patrick in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. That fact is shattering to Patrick’s Roman connection.
Moreover, there are many other proofs that Patrick was a Baptist, not a Catholic:
He only baptized born again believers–never infants. He wrote about a convert named Enda who was saved the night after his son Cormac was born. He baptized Enda but not his infant son. And in all his letters and his books Patrick never mentions baptizing infants. He wrote of “baptized captives,” “baptized handmaidens of Christ,” baptized believers,” and he wrote, “Perhaps, since I have baptized so many thousand men,…” But never infants.
An additional proof of Patrick being a Baptist was he only baptized by immersion. Various church historians record an incident when 12,000 people were converted and baptized. “Profiting by the presence of so vast a multitude, the apostle [Patrick] entered into the midst of them, his soul inflamed with the love of God, and with a celestial courage preached the truths of Christianity; and so powerful was the effect of his burning words that the seven princes and over twelve thousand more were converted on that day, and were soon baptized in a spring called Tobar Enadhaire.”
Thomas Moore, in his history of Ireland says: "The convert saw in the baptismal fount where he was immersed the sacred well at which his fathers worshipped."
Archbishop Usher admits: "Patrick baptized his converts in Dublin, including Alpine, the king's son, in a well near Saint Patrick Church, which in after ages became an object of devotion."
Famous church historian William Cathcart stated, "There is absolutely no evidence that any baptism but that of immersion of adult believers existed among the ancient Britons, in the first half of the fifth century, nor for a long time afterwards." He also wrote, "There are strong reasons for believing Patrick was a Baptist missionary and it is certain that his Baptism was immersion." No, Patrick was a Baptist preacher, not a Roman Catholic priest.
Patrick knew nothing of confession or forgiveness by a priest; he forbade worship of images; he never told his converts to pray to Mary or any other “saint”; he never mentions purgatory, holy days, rosary, or last rites. Moreover, Patrick never mentions any pope or cardinal or gives credibility to any creed, catechism or confessional. Nor to Eucharist, relics, or dogma of the Roman Church.
Patrick was not Irish nor was he a Catholic. He preached, practiced, professed, and promoted Baptist distinctives and to declare otherwise is simply Irish blarney.
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I remember the “In Search Of” episode on them.
Seriously, things like this are embarrassing to us.
i’m Catholic and i don’t care...
I think you missed a few chapters out of his life. After being in Ireland, he went to Rome to get the Pope's blessing, and received same.
You can't get over your inferiority complex, seems to me.
My ex-wife is Southern Baptist, until recently claimed that Southern Baptists believe “Blacks have no soul.” This was a recent as the 1990’s. No wonder there wasn't an African American in sight in the congregation.
Google the word “saint” in the Bible, Professor.
Also, look up how the Apostles baptized casts of thousands in their midst (no immersion, many children and infants in the throng). DUH, again.
St. Patrick lived in the 5th century. The earliest historical evidence of the Baptist church was in the 16th century. That seems like a mighty long time for no evidence to be found if Ireland was being converted to Baptists back in the 5th century.
This kind of logic is partly why Rome is still in the dark...the other reason is that God has kept the scales over their eyes.
I heard Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden were Catholics.
That would be "cafeteria catholics."
One can only hope that your extreme views do not bring on a dispute with any Anglican Bishopresses*, or members of the Presbyterian LGBTG Clerical Community, as some hold that "he" was a woman, and others that he was a "Closet Calvinist."
Since a Bishop presides over a "Bishopric," I hope you can accept my tasteful neologism for lady bishops. One doth shudder at the possible alternatives....
Well, I’m Scot-Irish Catholic and REALLY don’t care.
Now, get off my lawn.
Wow, that's a pretty small peg to hang one's hat on.
Which Christian church isn't evangelical?
Talk about revisionist history.
AND like I pointed out, he kept the seventh day Sabbath, something that Baptists just don’t do (except for seventh day Baptists)
I want to come too!!!!! I’m family too, we’re FReepers together!
I’m Irish and Catholic and I don’t care either.
http://jimmyakin.com/was-st-patrick-catholic
The following sounds very Roman Catholic to me:
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.
Is there any other kind?
What a lie from the author.
Brought to you by the same people that claim America was founded by Muslims.
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