Saint Patrick and the "C" Word

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Today is the feast of our glorious Saint Patrick, the Patron Saint and Apostle of the Emerald Isle, Ireland.

The Feast of Saint Patrick is not about leprechauns and Irish beer and pagan celebrations. It is a about a saint who sought to convert the pagans of Ireland by engaging in that which is forbidden in most instances today by the counterfeit church of conciliarism, proselytism. Saint Patrick wanted to convert the chieftains of the pagan Irish tribes in order to save their souls and thus to convert the people over whom they ruled. Saint Patrick knew that there was only one means of salvation, that provided to us in the Catholic Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope. He sought with urgency the conversion of those to whom he was sent as a missionary to preach and to save.

The glorious saint of the Emerald Isle, the Land of Erin, Saint Patrick, teaches us much about our duties as Catholics to seek the conversion  of all others to the Catholic Faith. No obstacle was too great and no penance was too severe to deter him from doing the apostolic work that Pope Saint Celestine the First had given him to convert the people of Ireland out of their pagan beliefs and practices to the liberation from the power of sin and eternal death to be found exclusively in the Catholic Church. Saint Patrick was not concerned about finding "common ground" with the Druids. He was not concerned about incorporating pagan practices into the Immemorial Mass of Tradition that he offered. He was concerned about one thing and one thing alone: the subordination of all things in Irish life to the Catholic Faith without any exception whatsoever.

Saint Patrick's zeal to convert souls inspired countless others to imitate his holy example. The whole history of the Church prior to 1958 is a consistent story of one saint after another who sought to go to distant lands to bring people into the true Church, outside of which there is no salvation.

Missionary zeal for souls filled the heart of Saint Francis Xavier himself, who converted the entire population of Goa, India.

Missionary zeal to bring souls back into the Catholic Church prompted Saint Peter Canisius and Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen, who was killed by those wretched people known as Calvinists (many of whose anti-Catholic beliefs are the foundation of the Protestant and Masonic Novus Ordo service) to seek out the conversion of Protestants.

Missionary zeal for souls impelled Saint Josaphat to seek back the lost sheep who had been lured into Orthodoxy, causing him to lose his life. This stands in sharp contrast to conciliarism's discouragement, if not outright prohibition in many instances, of the conversion of souls to the true Faith. The Balamand Agreement, entered into by representatives of the counterfeit church of conciliarism and various representatives of Orthodoxy, specifically forbids that Saint Josaphat gave up his life to do: to convert members of the Orthodox churches to the true Faith, Catholicism:

22) Pastoral activity in the Catholic Church, Latin as well as Eastern, no longer aims at having the faithful of one Church pass over to the other; that is to say, it no longer aims at proselytizing among the Orthodox. It aims at answering the spiritual needs of its own faithful and it has no desire for expansion at the expense of the Orthodox Church. Within these perspectives, so that there will no longer be room for mistrust and suspicion, it is necessary that there be reciprocal exchanges of information about various pastoral projects and that thus cooperation between bishops and all those with responsibilities in our Churches can be set in motion and develop. (Full Text of the Balamand Statement)

And then there were the saints who wanted to go to mission lands but who were prevented from doing so. Saint Anthony of Padua wanted in the worst way to be a missionary to convert the Saracens (yes, Saint Anthony wanted to convert the Mohammedans; there is that nasty "c" word again, conversion). He fell ill when arriving in North Africa and could not live his life as a missionary. Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini wanted to go China, winding up ministering to the Italians who had migrated to the United States of America at the personal behest of Pope Leo XIII himself. Missionary zeal for souls filled the heart of Saint Francis Xavier himself, who converted the entire population of Goa, India, and destroyed false idols aplenty.

Saint Patrick and the other great missionaries of the Church proved themselves faithful to this injunction of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, given to the Eleven before He Ascended to the Father's right hand in glory on Pentecost Sunday:

And the eleven disciples went into Galilee, unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And seeing them they adored: but some doubted. And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.  (Mt. 28:16-20)

 

The zeal of Saint Patrick, who personally baptized 120,000 sons and daughters of Erin, and the other great missionaries of the Church stands in sharp contrast to the demands of the novelty of false ecumenism that teaches us that we not seek the conversion of others to the true Faith. That is why we must invoke Saint Patrick's holy intercession to bring an end to the abominations of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, which reaffirms people in false religions while no effort is made to bring them into the true Church.

As has been noted frequently on this site, both the late Karol Wojtyla John Paul II and Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI discouraged "proselytism" among Protestants and the Orthodox. The "preacher" to the conciliar "papal" household, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, has said, without being contradicted by His Apostateness, Benedict XVI, Antipope Emeritus, that the Catholic Church "had the lost right" to convert Jews because of the "way this had been done in the past." Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI rejected what he calls the "ecumenism of the return," placing him in direct and incontrovertible contradiction to the work of the Catholic martyrs mentioned above and to the very appeals for such a return made by Pope Pius IX in Iam Vos Omnes, September 13, 1868, and Pope Pius XI in Mortalium Animos, January 6, 1928. Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis is taking false ecumenism to the next level by obliterating all distinctions among the "world's religions," something that is demonstrated in today's original article.

As has been noted frequently on this site, the current "antipope emeritus" addressed Jewish rabbis many occasions now during his false "pontificate," and he never once invited them to convert to the true Faith to save their immortal souls. Not once. Not even close. Jorge Mario Bergoglio/Francis is even more rabid in his support for the ancient enemies of Christ the King, who have endorsed his "election" with particular relish. There is so apostolic zeal here, just apostasy, that's all.

This craziness--and there is no other word for it--flies in the face of Catholic truth: that the Mosaic Covenant ended when the curtain in the Temple in Jerusalem was torn in two from top to bottom after Our Lord had died on the wood of the Holy Cross on Good Friday. Our Lord Himself did have something to say about this at the Last Supper:

HIC EST ENIM CALIX SANGUINIS MEI, NOVI ET AETERNI TESTAMENTI: MYSTERIUM FIDEI: QUI PRO VOBIS ET PRO MULTIS EFFUNDETUR IN REMISSIONEM PECCATORUM.

THIS IS THE CHALICE OF MY BLOOD OF THE NEW AND ETERNAL COVENANT: THE MYSTERY OF FAITH: WHICH IS BEING SHED FOR YOU AND FOR MANY FOR THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS.

 

Saint Patrick sought to serve only the New and Eternal Covenant instituted by Our Lord on Holy Thursday and ratified by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross. He did not have to "search for truth" in inter-religious "dialogue" with the Druids or anyone else in Ireland. He told them that they had to convert to the Catholic Faith, being willing to lay down his life for their conversion if it was necessary for him to do so. He confronted the chieftains on Easter Sunday, 433 A.D., winning the day for Christ the King and thus beginning his work for the conversion of the entirety of Ireland, a work that continued in the years ahead of him as he traveled throughout the Land of Erin, eventually establish his own primatial see in Armagh.

Although Saint Patrick encountered challenges and difficulties now and again, he never flagged in his efforts to save souls by seeking their conversion to the Catholic Faith. Seeking the conversion of souls never goes out of date. It never has an "expiration date." It is incapable of being consigned to the Orwellian memory hole by the Modernist revolutionaries who exercised great influence at the "Second" Vatican Council and who have held the levers of power and influence in chancery offices and universities and seminaries and colleges and schools and parishes under conciliar captivity from that time forward. Saint Patrick knew that there was only one path to salvation: to preach the true Faith as it had been deposited by the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made Man in Our Lady's Virginal and Immaculate Womb in the one, true Church He created upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope.

Unlike the late Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, who praised witch doctors and other shamans for the great "services" they provided to their tribes, and unlike many diocesan "bishops," who merrily participate in pagan rituals in the context of the offering of alleged Masses so as to fulfill the principles of the "inculturation of the Gospel," Saint Patrick wanted to put an end once and for all to the diabolical practices of Druidism. The fact that Druidism has risen again in Ireland in recent decades is partly the result of the counterfeit church of conciliarism's diabolical "reconciliation" with the principles of that "new era inaugurated in 1789," thereby putting an apparent "Catholic" gloss and the Protestant and Judeo-Masonic overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King. Saint Patrick sought to establish Catholicism as the one and only foundation of personal and social order on the Emerald Isle. Saint Patrick sought to work for the conversion of the masses by converting the chieftains, thereby establishing the framework for Catholic monarchism throughout Europe. The people, Saint Patrick understood, would likely follow the example of their leaders.

Taking advantage of the structure of hierarchical tribal life, Saint Patrick quickly sought to establish dioceses throughout Ireland so as to accustom the Irish people to the hierarchical nature of the true Church, the Catholic Church. He consecrated no less than 350 bishops during his apostolic work in Ireland. Among those he consecrated as bishops were several who later went on to be raised to the Church's altars with himself, including his own nephew, Saint Mel, Saint Guasach, Saint MacCarthem, and Saint Loman. His work brought about the conversion of Saint Brigid of Kildare, through Saint Mel, and produced a nation so steeped in Catholicism that it boasts of scores upon scores of canonized saints. Saint Aidan, Saint Brendan, Saint Kevin, Saint Colman of Armagh (as well as several other saints by the name of Colman), Saint Columba, Saint Columban, Saint Kieran, Saint Malachy, and Saint Ita, among many others, learned to love and to live the Catholic Faith as a result of the seeds planted by the glorious Saint Patrick.

Unlike most of the "bishops" of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, most of whom are not exactly noted for austere lives of penance, Saint Patrick combined his great pastoral zeal to convert souls with severe penances, including spending time frequently in what became known as Saint Patrick's Purgatory, Lough Dearg. Saint Patrick spent long hours in prayers and subjected his body to many mortifications. He thought only to teach people to love God as He had revealed Himself solely through His true Church, giving no quarter at all to any false belief or false religious practice. He would NOT accept "gifts" from false religions, as Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI did last year while visiting the United States of America.

Saint Patrick wanted to eradicate false beliefs and false practices and all other types of sin from the lives of the Irish people and from every aspect of the Irish nation, which is why those who seek to march in Saint Patrick's Day Parades by identifying themselves as participants in perversity are dishonoring the great Apostle to the Irish. Saint Patrick despised sin. He knew that sin is what caused Our Lord to suffer unspeakable horror in His Sacred Humanity during His fearful Passion and Death and is what caused His Most Blessed Mother to have Seven Swords of Sorrow pierced through her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

Although the Catholic legacy of Saint Patrick was attacked fiercely by the British following the English Protestant Revolt and has been undermined by cultural forces imported principally from the United States of America, which itself was shaped by the Protestantism and Freemasonry that undermined the Faith of many of the Irish immigrants to this country, Ireland stood out among the nations of Christendom for its sanctity and scholarship for centuries. Saint Patrick would have blanched at the mention of an oxymoronic conciliarist phrase such as a "healthy secularity." He lived and worked and died so that Catholicism would permeate every aspect of the lives of the Irish people. His intercession must be involved daily for the people of Ireland who still practice the Faith to hold onto the fullness of Tradition without compromise--and for those who have fallen by the wayside to return to the true Sheepfold of Christ. As the Patron Saint of all of the Irish people no matter where they have situated themselves. Saint Patrick's intercession must be invoked in a special way to help those of Irish ancestry outside of Ireland to honor him by their fidelity to the Catholic Tradition he brought to Ireland in the midst of cultural circumstances very similar to the ones we face in the United States today.

Saint Patrick worked for the Catholicization of Ireland. He wants the Catholicization of every land. How it must sadden him in Heaven to see so many sons and daughters of Erin in public life in this country who support all manner of sins under cover of civil law. How it must sadden him further to see so many conciliar "bishops" of Irish descent reaffirm those pro-abortion politicians as they themselves undermine the Deposit of Faith and make war in their own dioceses upon the Immemorial Mass of the ages that he brought to Ireland in the Fifth Century. How much we should pray to him to help us remain steadfast in the Faith on a daily basis so that our prayers, offered to God through Our Lady's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart, might be more efficacious in bringing about the re-conversion of Irish Catholics, both in Ireland and elsewhere, who have lost the Faith and have embraced the very cultural trends that Saint Patrick eradicated so assiduously.

I cannot claim Irish ancestry, at least not directly. There is much about my late mother's heritage that is unknown. We know that her surname at birth was Coomer, which we believe is Welsh. Nothing is known, though, about her biological father. What I do know, though, is that my wife is almost entirely Irish, which means that our daughter is about half-Irish. She has, therefore, many Irish saints praying for her as she grows in the Faith every day. One of the first things I do every day is to pray to my wife's and daughter's patron saints for their spiritual and temporal well-being. Saint Patrick is thus at the top of the list of saints I pray to each and every single day.

God knew from all eternity that Saint Patrick would die in Lent. He lived a penitential life to help the souls he was appointed by Pope Saint Celestine to serve to get them home to heaven. He lived a penitential life to help the Poor Souls in Purgatory. He lived a penitential life to help the land he converted to the Catholic Faith. It was only right that he should die in Lent and that his feast day should be kept in this holy season of prayer and fasting and penance and mortification. Indeed, Saint Patrick fasted and prayed so severely on one occasion, doing battle with demons, to have found himself rewarded by Our Lord by being granted the following petitions:

1. Many souls would be free from the pains of Purgatory through his intercession.
2. Whoever in the spirit of penance would recite his hymn before death would attain the heavenly reward.
3. Barbarian hordes would never obtain sway in his Church.
4. Seven years before the Judgment Day, the sea would spread over Ireland to save its people from the temptations and terrors of the Antichrist.
5. He should be deputed to judge the whole Irish race on the last day.

Keeping in mind the penitential spirit that characterized the entirety of Saint Patrick's holy life of service to the Church, which was fostered greatly by the six years he was a slave in Ireland from the age of seventeen to the age of twenty-three, we should not celebrate too exuberantly today. We honor Saint Patrick best by doing what he did throughout his priesthood and episcopate: deny ourselves permissible pleasures in order to united ourselves more fully with the Cross of the Divine Redeemer, at which stood Our Lady, who is always pleased with the voluntary sacrifices given to her through her Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart to be used as she sees fit.

Saint Patrick is not honored by drunkenness and revelry. He is honored by hearing Holy Mass today. He is honored by the time we spend before the Blessed Sacrament today. He is honored by our praying of Our Lady's Most Holy Rosary. He is honored by our making of the Stations of the Cross during Tuesday in the Third Week of Lent. He is honored by our reading about his life and times in Dom Prosper Gueranger's The Liturgical Year. He is honored by our praying--and taking deep to our hearts--the prayer he recited before he confronted the chieftains on Easter Sunday in 433 A.D.:

I bind to myself today the strong virtue of the Invocation of the Trinity: I believe the Trinity in the Unity, The Creator of the Universe.

I bind to myself today the virtue of the Incarnation of Christ with His Baptism, the virtue of His crucifixion with His burial, the virtue of His Resurrection with His Ascension, the virtue of His coming on the Judgment Day.

I bind to myself today the virtue of the love of seraphim, in the obedience of angels, in the hope of resurrection unto reward, in prayers of Patriarchs, in predictions of Prophets, in preaching of Apostles, in faith of Confessors, in purity of holy Virgins, in deeds of righteous men.

I bind to myself today the power of Heaven, the light of the sun, the brightness of the moon, the splendour of fire, the flashing of lightning, the swiftness of wind, the depth of sea, the stability of earth, the compactness of rocks.

I bind to myself today God's power to guide me, God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to teach me, God's eye to watch me, God's ear to hear me, God's word to give me speech, God's hand to guide me, God's way to lie before me, God's shield to shelter me, God's Host to secure me, against the snares of demons, against the seductions of vices, against the lusts of nature, against everyone who meditates injury to me, whether far or near, whether few or with many.

I invoke today all these virtues against every hostile merciless power which may assail my body and my soul, against the incantations of false prophets, against the black laws of heathenism, against the false laws of heresy, against the deceits of idolatry, against the spells of women, and smiths, and druids, against every knowledge that binds the soul of man.

Christ, protect me today against every poison, against burning, against drowning, against death-wound, that I may receive abundant reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ at my right, Christ at my left, Christ in the fort, Christ in the chariot seat, Christ in the [deck], Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks to me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

I bind to myself today the strong virtue of an invocation of the Trinity: I believe the Trinity in the Unity, The Creator of the Universe.

Not a bad prayer for our time. Not a bad prayer for all times. Not a bad prayer to be invoke in a day when false "popes," one of whom has kissed the Koran while another entered a mosque and took off his shoes before turning in the direction of Mecca and assuming the Mohammedan prayer position and has provided "space" for the false worship of Protestantism while at the same time calling a mountain upon which Buddhists worship their devils as "sacred," and false "bishops" themselves pay homage to false gods and bind themselves to the false laws of heresy and make incantations to false prophets, yes, even in the context of alleged Catholic "liturgies." Saint Patrick is the model for all Catholic bishops, zealous in seeking the conversion of all men to the Catholic Church as he sought to convert himself by his life of constant prayer and severe penances and embrace of Holy Poverty.

The aforementioned Dom Prosper Gueranger wrote the following prayer to our great and glorious Saint Patrick:

Thy life, great saint, was spent in the arduous toils of an apostle; but rich was the harvest thou didst reap! Every fatigue seemed to thee light, if only thou couldst give to men the precious gift of faith; and the people to whom thou didst leave it have kept it with a constancy which is one of thy greatest glories. Pray for us, that this faith, without which it is impossible to please God, may take possession of our hearts and minds. It is by faith, that the just man liveth, says the prophet, and it is faith that, during this holy season of Lent, is showing us the justice and mercy of God, in order that we may be converted, and offer to our offended Lord the tribute of our penance. We are afraid of what the Church imposes on us, simply because our faith is weak. If or principles were those of faith, we should soon be mortified men. Thy life, though so innocent, and so rich in good works, was one of extraordinary penance: gain for us thy spirit, and help us to follow thee, at least at a humble distance. Pray for Erin, that dear country of thine, which loves and honours thee so fervently. She is threatened with danger even now, and many of her children have left the faith thou didst teach. An odious system of proselytism [conducted by the Protestants] has disturbed thy flock; protect it, and suffer not the children of martyrs to be apostates. Let thy fatherly care follow them that have been driven by suffering to emigrate from their native land: may they keep true to the faith, be witnesses of the true religion in the countries to which they have fled, and ever show themselves to be the obedient children of the Church. May their misfortunes thus serve the advance of the kingdom of God. Holy pontiff ! intercede for England; pardon her the injustice she has shown to thy children; and by thy powerful prayers hasten the happy day of her return to Catholic unity. Pray, too, for the whole Church; thy prayer, being that of an apostle, easily finds access to Him that sent thee.

Whether we are of Irish descent or not, Saint Patrick is saint for each and every one of us. Have a blessed Saint Patrick Day as we make his prayer  and that of Dom Prosper Gueranger our own as we seek to plant the seeds in our own land for what he accomplished in Ireland. the Triumph of the Social Reign of Christ the King and of Mary our Immaculate Queen.

Vivat Christus Rex!

Our Lady of Knock, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Patrick, pray for us.

Saint Colman of Armagh, pray for us.

Saint Mel, pray for us.

Saint Brigid of Kildare, pray for us.

Saint Malachy, pray for us.

Saint Columba, pray for us.

Saint Columban, pray for us.

Saint Kevin, pray for us.

Saint Brendan, pray for us.

Saint Kieran, pray for us.

Saint Aidan, pray for us.

Saint Ita, pray for us.

Saint Guasach, pray for us.

Saint MacCarthem, pray for us.

Saint Loman, pray for us.

Saint Cormac, pray for us.

Blessed Oliver Plunkett, pray for us.

Saint Tassach, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints