
Who Was the Real St. Patrick? - magda_wang
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/03/who-was-the-real-st-patrick-an-evangelist-or-a-tax-dodger/
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jawns
I'm Catholic, but my kids take classes once a week at a school run by an
Evangelical church.

I was surprised last March that one of the teachers gave a talk to the kids
about how St. Patrick was not a Catholic.

I had never before heard such a suggestion, but apparently it's a sore point
with some Evangelicals.

In case it interests you, Jimmy Akin, a Catholic apologist, presents some
evidence here that strongly suggests that Patrick was in communion with Rome:
[http://jimmyakin.com/was-st-patrick-catholic](http://jimmyakin.com/was-st-
patrick-catholic)

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teilo
Well, to be fair, at that time there was no real contention between the Roman
and Celtic churches, and I have not seen any evidence that they considered
each other outside of one another's communions.

The idea of "Roman" Christianity had not taken hold until Gregory the Great,
and especially his successor, Sabinius, who formally accepted the supremacy
over all the bishops.

The conflict between the Celtic and Roman churches came later under Augustine
of Canterbury, who required the Celtic churches to adopt the Roman rite,
abandon their old Italic Bible translations, and adopt the Vulgate. That
stirred up quite a kerfuffle.

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padraic7a
If you want to read Patrick in his own words check out 'the Confessio':
[https://www.confessio.ie/#](https://www.confessio.ie/#)

It's based on the different manuscript copies of the Confessio and the
Epistola (or Letter) to Coroticus, both of which are acknowledged as being
written by the man himself.

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jhbadger
There's always the famous joke about Erwin Schrödinger (who lived the last
part of his life in Ireland) and the mathematician/revolutionary Éamon de
Valera proving that there were two St. Patricks and no God.

