FROM YOUR PASTOR’S DESK:
SAINT PATRICK WAS NEITHER A ROMAN CATHOLIC, MUCH LESS A CATHOLIC SAINT
Millions just celebrated St. Patrick’s Day by “greening,”’ as they have done for too long now, entertaining grossly mistaken idea of who is and what he stood for, like so many other errors of doctrine and beliefs. Let’s straighten the record, once and for all right here from these excerpts from the book Facts of Faith, revised ed., by Christian Edwardson, published in 1943:
“Patrick Not A Catholic. To those who have heard of Patrick only as a Catholic saint, it may be a surprise to learn that he was not a Catholic at all, but that he was a member of the original Celtic church [who kept the Bible Sabbath]. There is no more historic evidence for Patrick’s being a Roman Catholic saint, than for Peter’s being the first pope. Catholics claim that Pope Celestius commissioned Patrick as an Roman Catholic missionary in Ireland( but William Cathcart, D.D., says:
‘There is strong evidence that Patrick had no Roman commission in Ireland.’ ‘As Patrick’s churches In Ireland [to his day, he founded 365 churches], like their brethren in Britain, REPUDIATED the supremacy of the popes, all knowledge of the conversion of Ireland through his ministry must be suppressed (by Rime, at all cosr.)’- ‘The Ancient British and Irish Churches,’ W. Cathcart, D.D., p. 85.
“The popes who lived contemporary to Patrick never mentions him. ‘There is not a written word from one of them rejoicing over Patrick’s additions to their church, showing closely that he was not a Roman missionary…..So completely buried was Patrick and his work by popes and other Roman Catholics, that in their epistles and larger publications, his name does not once occur in one of them until A.D. 634.’ – Ibid, p. 83.
‘Prosper does not notice Patrick. He says nothing of the greatest success ever given to a missionary of Christ, apparently because he was not a Romanist.’ -Ibid, p. 84. ‘Bede never speaks of St. Patrick in his celebrated ‘Ecclesiastical History.’ – Ibid, p. 85.
“But, wring of the year 431, Bede says of a Catholic missionary: ‘Palladius was sent by Celestinus, the Roman pontiff, to the Scots (Irish) that believed in Christ.’ -‘Ecclesiastical History,’ p. 23. London: 1894. But this papal emissary was not received any more favorably by the church in Ireland, than was Augustine later received by the Celtic Church of Scotland, for he left ‘because he did not receive respect in Ireland.’ – William Cathcart, D.D.
“No Roman Catholic Church would have dared to ignore a Bishop sent them by the pope. This PROVES that the churches in the British Isles did not recognize the pope. Dr. Todd says:
‘The Confession’ of St. Patrick contains not a word of a mission from Pope Celestine. One object of the writer was to defend himself from the presumption in having undertaken such a work a the conversion of the Irish, rude and unlearned as he was. Had he received a regular commission from the See of Rome, that fact alone would be an unanswerable reply. But he makes no mention of Pope Celestine, and rests his defense altogether on the DIVINE CALL which he believed himself to have received for his work.’ – Ibid, pp. 81, 82. ‘Muirchu wrote more than two hundred years after Patrick’s death. His declaration is positive that HE DID NOT GO TO ROME.’ – Ibid, p. 88.
“There are three reasons why Patrick could not have been a Roman Catholic missionary:
1) Early Catholic historians and popes AVOIDED mentioning Patrick or his work; until later LEGENDARY histories represented him as a Catholic Saint
2) When papal missionaries arrived in.Britain, 596 A.D., the leaders of the original Celtic church refused to accept their doctrines, or to acknowledge the papal authority, and would not dine with them (Compare 1 Cor. 5:11; 2 John 8-11.) ‘They acted towards the Roman party exactly ‘as if they were pagans.’ – ‘Ecclesiastical Records,’ by Richard Hart, pp. viii, ziv.
3) The doctrines of the Celtic church of Patrick’s day DIFFERED SO WIDELY from those of the Roman church, that the latter could not have been accepted it as ‘Catholic.’ Patrick must have been a Sabbath-keeper, because the churches he established in Ireland, as well as the mother church in Scotland and England, followed the apostolic practice of keeping the seventh-day Sabbath, and of working on Sunday…But this was considered as deadly HERESY by the Papacy,” – Facts of Faith, Christian Edwardson, pp. 136, 137 Southern Publishing Asso. 1943.
Be properly informed. Save your soul from deception. God bless, NMF
