The most famous archaeological finds from ancient Ireland are the “Bog People,” bodies preserved for more than 2000 years in the country’s swamps. Archaeologists believe these Bog People were the victims of ritual sacrifice by Irish pagans.
Historians say that after that period Ireland actually decivilized. Archaeological evidence suggests that agriculture receded, as did visible settlements. Pagans populated the island, and because literacy wasn’t a big thing there, much of what we know about second-century, third-century, and fourth-century Ireland is from the Romans in Britain who tell of being raided by Irish tribes.
The raids were your standard looting by barbarians: The Irish tribesmen would land their boats in Britain, run through a couple of coastal villages, smash, murder, loot, kidnap, then get back on the boat and go home.
Talk about deplorables.
One such Irish raiding party, around the year 420, kidnapped a 16-year-old and enslaved him, forcing him to watch sheep in County Antrim. Patrick, the boy, escaped six years later, eventually made it home, became a priest, and later a bishop.
Then, he returned to Ireland. He sailed to the pagan island (there were some Christians there already, but it was mostly pagan), confronted the people who had raided his homeland and held him as a slave, and told them they were the sons and daughters of God and that Jesus died for their sins so they could get to heaven.
Patrick preached to the deplorables. Today, the Irish, in Ireland and around the world, are arguably the most important tribe in all of Christendom, and the worldwide fame of St. Patrick is a testament to that.
This aspect of St. Patrick’s life comes to mind on his feast day this year, as we look out at a country with its own signs of decivilizing. Civil debate is become harder. Life expectancy is getting shorter. Wages are stagnant for the working class.
The working class was famously dismissed, or worse, by the losing presidential candidates in the past two elections. Mitt Romney condemned the “47 percent” as takers who could not ever be convinced to take responsibility of their own life.
Hillary Clinton, this past week, went overseas and after bragging about winning the parts of the country with the strongest economies, characterized her rival’s voters as people who were “backward” facing, unproductive economically, and convinced by a message of bigotry. This echoed her argument during the campaign when she bashed a quarter of the U.S. as “deplorables” who are “irredeemable.”
It would have been easy for St. Patrick to dismiss the Irish. But he was unwilling to see anyone as irredeemable.
Presidents Barack Obama and Trump are far from being saints, but didn’t blame working-class people for being backwards. (Even Obama’s “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion” comments were an effort to excuse their “paganness.”)
The Catholic Church holds up the saints, among other things, as models for men and women to emulate. Let’s hope our leaders emulate St. Patrick and preach to the unwashed and see everyone as redeemable.
