Author: Tom Cahill

These writers have the imagination of a cockroach and the writing ability of a beancounter. Or vice versa. Have our latter-day scribes never heard of the notion of a thematic history? Memo to dingbat writers: You are free to deduce likely outcomes from limited factual information.

What is mythical in the story of St. Patrick is plausible, and what is known to be true appears completely implausible. Patrick likely never used the Shamrock trefoil to show the essential unity of the Trinity to the pagans of Ireland. So what? One thing is for sure: the Irish converted to Christianity en masse. The shamrock is a precis of the history of Ireland's introduction to Christianity. That's what makes a myth stay around for 1600 years. The myth encapsulates the actual historical outcome. Like a double clickable icon, the shamrock opens up real history while it is itself subsumed.

The "myth" that Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland is not myth: it is symbology. The snakes are symbolic of the paganism Patrick utterly routed from Ireland. The fact that snakes are not found in Ireland is a Deo-incidencia as my Spanish speaking friends say.

Back to our beloved saint. Patrick, 50 years old, is sent by his Church to Ireland with the task of replacing the millennia-old, highly evolved, polytheistic belief system of a warlike people. He was to replace the existing belief system with a monotheistic religion of peace that had originated with a Semitic tribe a mere three hundred years before, thousands of miles away. The extraordinary outcome, the elimination of the entrenched druidic religion in an extraordinarily short period of time and its replacement with a new religion by one man is mythical in scale but surely it is concretely true. His superhuman success is an historical fact given witness daily in our 21st century by millions of Irish and Irish hyphenates. "That's y'all all" as they say in Texas.

Patrick's slavery was definitive in his formation. He must have hated the very sound of the Irish language. He surely hated the Irish with whom he had been in contact. They were his masters. The violence of his taking, the guttural Gaelic commands so often followed by sharp violence, must have imprinted on him the savagery of the people whose prisoner he now was. What we know of slavery from recent American history tells us that he must surely have been "broken" to bring on that subservience necessary to leave a slave alone herding animals at a distance from the master's domicile. In every respect imaginable he could not be blamed if he had a powerful hatred of these Irish people.

Patrick was of limited education. His writings are rarely commented upon without reference to his poor Latin or less than scholarly expression. His enslavement to the very people he was asked to convert had halted his education at 16. Yet within these acknowledged mental limits he wrote the first blatantly anti -slavery tract on record in the history of Western Civilization. That is about 1400 years before abolitionists persuaded Mr Lincoln as to the justness of the cause of the American enslaved. Of course experience counts when writing.

Imagine a slave of the 19th century escaping the American South and heading to Canada where he becomes a Catholic priest. After sometime as a priest he is asked to return to the South with the challenge to convert 19th century Southern Baptists to Roman Catholicism. That is a tough row to hoe without being killed. Can you imagine how Patrick must have felt on the sea and land journey heading back to Ireland; choosing to leave his family to go back to the very people that had forcibly torn him from that sacred bosom when he was so young. And perhaps to a violent end.

Patrick was surely a man of profound spiritual conviction to sacrifice the remainder of his life to the love of those who acted so violently against him in his youth. And such indomitable courage! Again the reality of Patrick steals a march on the mythology that has built up around him over the centuries.

Anyway to Ireland Patrick went. He spoke the language. A very rare thing. Even slavery requires communication and naturally he learned his master's language. He converted the Irish and set in motion Ireland's Golden Age of Learning, wherein the children of the European aristocracy sent their children to Ireland then known as the Island of Saints and Scholars. Patrick's spiritual sons and daughters founded the first hospitals, public schools and great universities of Europe. And as the other Thomas Cahill said in his wonderful book "How the Irish Saved Civilization", they saved a boatload of ancient books, thereby laying the foundation for Western Civilization.

Later when the Irish were enslaved under colonialism Patrick's captivity was shared very personally by every living Irish person over many centuries. St. Patrick's charism, joined with a shared and very profound historical experience, has rooted Patrick in the Irish soul for eternity. St. Patrick was beaten down in body and soul, he escaped, he rose, he came back, and changed the world of his masters for the better and forever. Ultimately that is why we are the fighting Irish. Put us down and we will show you the response of St. Patrick.

When the Irish landed in the US, as elsewhere all around the globe, their love for this saint, brought over in their very souls, carried all of them one way or another through great trials. His spirit had saved again. He was a singular man that formed a singular people.

We Irish love this man. But he is bigger than us. He was an exemplary human being.

His good name and great sacrifice should be celebrated by humanity across the globe on a day when we are all brought together by one spirit of joy symbolized by one color - Oops! We already do that. Now you know why.