"All that I've read says that Patrick was aligned with the Celtic Church which was primarily aligned with the Orthodox bishops and not with Rome.
Is that how you read history?"
I think in +Patrick's times it is sort of meaningless to talk about alignments one way or the other. There was only The Church then. Christianity was united in its beliefs, but the churches certainly had local or ethnic overtones in both liturgical practice and ecclesiology. I think it is fair to say that the monasticism which developed in Ireland and Scotland and England in the early years was very Eastern in its praxis and quite independant of Rome. There is every reason to believe that the influences on that monasticism were almost purely what we know call Orthodox. It wasn't really until the Synod of Whitby that Rome made a big push for control. That in and of itself made at least some sense since there is no question but that the bishop of Rome was and is the Patriarch of the West. That said, it is important to remember that the conversion of Northern Europe all the way to the borders of Russia was accomplished by Irish and Scottish monks who were very, very Orthodox in their theology and manner of prayer and liturgy.
Thanks for the response. It ties in with what I've been reading, and what I probably poorly explained.
Any websites, articles, or books recommended on the era of Patrick and the tendency toward a more eastern way of practicing their Christianity?
This is true, but it is also important to remember that while the Eastern Patriarchs were as prone as any to try to solidify control over what they felt were their proper spheres of influence, it is also true that numerous times they have bowed to reality and blessed the creation first, of independent national churches with effective self-government, and later, the actual creation of Patriarchates in those countries -- Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia, etc... I can think of no good reason why Rome wouldn't have done the same, although there may be those reasons.
There were still strong forces for unity and uniformity in the Orthodox world, in spite of the creation of independently governed churches. Those forces exist still today -- one can argue with fairly good evidence that Orthodox Christians in Lebanon are more like Orthodox Christians in northern Russia in their liturgics and practices than are, say Catholics in Germany like those in Argentina. And this is without any centralized authority to create or enforce that unity.
Had Ireland been in the east, there would be a Patriarch of Ireland today.
On second thought, maybe that's a good argument for Rome doing things the way it did! :-)