Dear St Patrick . . . Love, Ireland

Stamping out the Irish snake: St Patrick. Illustration: Archive Photos/Getty Images

To
mark our upcoming national holiday they asked a selection of people to
compose open letters to their patron saint...St Patrick

Frank McNally

 Irish Times  columnist

 Dear
St Patrick – First of all, congratulations on 1,600 years of
achievement. You’re probably in the top five most famous saints
worldwide. Dublin has expanded your feast day into a week-long festival.
You still stop traffic on Fifth Avenue every March 17th . And all this despite the fact that you were never formally canonised.

You even have a cross named after you: the red diagonal one on the Union Jack . My sources tell me that a saint normally had to be martyred, like
George and Andrew, to earn such an honour, whereas, by all accounts, you
died of natural causes. In one version you were 119 at the time.
Anyway, I’m not asking how you got the rules bent. Just well done.

The success of your global brand aside, there’s bad news too. Paganism has made a big comeback in Ireland , although you’ll be glad to know that, except at certain music
festivals and anti-motorway protests, druids are a thing of the past. Is
it true, by the way, that the “snakes” you banished were just a
metaphor for the druids’ serpentine symbols, or did Wikipedia make that up?

You
probably heard about the economy. The country is in a dire state, and
we’re all desperate for solutions. In fact, if you were relaunching your
mission to Ireland now you’d attract many followers by lighting a
paschal fire under the bondholders. Some people would throw their
mortgages on it too, to fan the flames.

Then
again, the economy is hardly your concern. On the contrary, the years
of hardship that seem to face us may well suit your long-term plans.
Perhaps your Earthly Social Research Institute is projecting a return to
modest levels of spiritual growth in the third quarter of 2011,
increasing to 5 per cent annually by 2015. If so, good luck with that.

But did I mention that a certain now-infamous dinner in 2008, involving politicians and bankers, happened at a place called Druids Glen . What were you at that day? Could you not have afflicted those
involved with a plague of boils or something? Setting Caoimhghín Ó
Caoláin on them hardly counts.

Anyway,
forget about that. I have only one favour to ask you, and it wouldn’t
involve any major interventionism. It concerns the disastrous timing of
your feast day. I’m not blaming you: tradition has it that March 17th is
when you died, and you may not have had any say in the matter. Imagine
how much more pleasant the whole thing could be in May or June, or
September, when those American majorettes wouldn’t have goosebumps the
size of thimbles on their thighs. All you would have to do to help us
achieve this is arrange for evidence of an alternative date of death to
turn up somewhere.

I
suggest it could be contained in an inscribed fifth-century edition of
the Bible, hitherto unknown to scholars and found perfectly preserved in
a bog. Come to think of it, maybe this find could be part of a
priceless hoard of gold treasures from the period. Yes, that would make
it convincing.

If you think this is a good idea, all you need to do is inspire me to guess where the location of the hoard is. Just the Google Earth co-ordinates, revealed to me in a dream, would do. My metal detector
will take care of the rest. Maybe, to prevent any complications, I’ll
buy the land first. – Yours, etc, FRANK McNALLY  

Norah Casey  

Publisher and Dragons’ Den panellist  

Dear
St Patrick – Time was when your famous day brought Ireland alive the
world over and the simple act of wearing green and donning a shamrock
hat made us all proud to be Irish.

You
left us the greatest global brand in the world, and, if I’m being
honest, we haven’t always valued that great asset. Now, sadly, we have a
different global reputation, and maybe we are going to need more than
your great day to fix it.

This year we continue to convince world cities to turn iconic buildings green, including Sydney Opera House , New York ’s Empire State Building and Table Mountain in Cape Town . Rumour has it that we might even get to turn Mars green one of these
days. But behind the gimmickry lies a serious intent. Now more than ever
we need to reach out to that vast Irish family through our national
day, to attract investment and build stronger links to aid our growth.

So
as we strive to regenerate our global image and shake off the shackles
of the past we take comfort from the legacy you left us, especially the
three-leaf shamrock – it’s been very handy in explaining the triumvirate
of the IMF, Fine Gael and Labour coalition. – Yours, etc, NORAH CASEY  

Maureen Gaffney  

Adjunct professor of psychology and society, University College Dublin  

Dear St Patrick – You once saved this nation from bondage. I am writing to you to ask if you might consider helping out again.

Let
me explain. You were kidnapped by Irish marauders, sold as a slave and,
all in all, suffered a lot. In a horrible twist of fate we, the
children of Erin, find ourselves in much the same state, except in our
case the marauders were of the financial and political variety. Instead
of minding our master’s sheep on a cold, wet hill we have to work till
we drop paying off their debts.

How
did you stop feeling oppressed and angry about your undeserved fate?
How did you rouse your spirits and start to believe that this country
could be saved, was worth saving? Because that is exactly what each and
every one of us now needs to do: lift ourselves up, get a burst of
confidence, and muster enough self-belief to drive the new-style snakes
out of Ireland.

In
the process of saving the country you had a pretty rough time of time
of it. You donned the hair shirt, made your bed a rock and put up with
endless nonsense from the druids intent on hanging on to power. Believe
me, we know how you felt.

I
think you kept yourself going by deciding that these privations you
were enduring would count for something. But we can’t really know your
thoughts on this without hearing it first hand, right? Perhaps you might
give us the benefit of one or two apparitions.

In the first apparition you might tell us about the time you flatly refused to come down off Croagh Patrick , where you had spent 40 days fasting, sleeping in a cave and trying to protect yourself from pretty foul weather.

God
knew that you meant business and dispatched a negotiating angel, who
offered to expel all demons and save as many of his people “as far as
his vision could reach” – in other words, everybody who could be seen.

But
you were having none of this as-far-as practicably-possible stuff. No,
you insisted that all the people would have to be saved, even the ones
excluded and unseen in purgatory. You also wanted a guarantee that the
barbarian hordes would never be allowed to hold sway again. Actually, we
want much the same thing now. Really, when I think about it, you are
the perfect saint for our times because you are the saint of
accountability, in the full sense of that word.

The
second apparition should be to our latter-day saints, Enda and Eamon,
who are grappling with the strains of leadership. Like you, they have to
preach a new gospel of beliefs and persuade us all to make some
fundamental changes to the way we do things here.

You
were the master of what I call symbolic acts: actions that convey a
powerful positive message of the change that is about to happen. I am
thinking here of the time you took yourself off at Easter and, in defiance of the royal edict, lit a fire on the hill of Slane facing across the valley to Tara, where the old order held sway.

Then on Easter Sunday you marched on Tara, bearing aloft your new message of hope to the
assembled masses. Your enemies tried to obscure your message with cloud
and darkness, but you banished the clouds and secured victory with
another inspired symbolic act. You plucked a shamrock from the sward and
used its triple leaf and single stem to explain very complex things in a
way that made sense to a grounded people.

As
our new leaders face their difficult journey, any chance you could help
them out by giving them a few tips on symbolic acts? Could you also
stress that, as in your own case, symbolic acts work best at the
beginning of a mission, maybe in the first 100 days? You might drop a
hint that Easter, only 40 days away, would be a good time to start.

So,
how about it, St Patrick? Would you, as they say nowadays, consider
stepping up to the plate for a second time and helping us out? We would
be everlastingly grateful. – Yours, etc, MAUREEN GAFFNEY.    

Very Rev Robert MacCarthy  

Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin  

Dear St Patrick – Unlike the days of other patron saints St Patrick’s Day remains hugely important. As you happened to die on March 17th your feast day has resisted the attempt of liturgists to move it out of Lent , and it is also a badge of Irishness throughout the world.

What
should be uppermost in our minds on your day? Two things relate
directly to what we know of you. The first is that all Christians in
Ireland look back to you as the real founder of Christianity in this
land. Yet Christians here have been horribly divided since the 16th century . Christians have much more in common than they have differences, but you wouldn’t think so from the behaviour of the Irish churches . Relations between the churches are, to put it mildly, patchy
throughout the island. In the North bishops may be on good terms with
one another, but there is very little contact between Christians of
different churches; indeed, membership of different churches has been
used as the badge of separateness of the warringtribes there over the
past 30 years. In the rest of Ireland ecumenism is supposed to be good,
but the reality differs widely.

I
have found ecumenism in Dublin to be well behind what I found in
Kilkenny 25 years ago. I have invited many Roman Catholic preachers to
St Patrick’s – Bishop Willie Walsh is
to preach next week on your day – but there has been no reciprocation. I
have never been asked to speak in any Roman Catholic church in Dublin.

Th e second point is that you were yourself an immigrant to Ireland,
though you wouldn’t think so from our treatment of immigrants. This is
in spite of the fact that our hospitals and nursing homes rely heavily
on immigrants to staff them. Huge numbers of Irish were the poorest of
the poor who emigrated to the US during the 19th century , yet we have been grudging in our welcome to immigrants here.

The churches have done well in Dublin .

St Audoen’s Catholic Church is run as a Polish-language church, with several Polish priests on its staff, while the Anglican St George and St Thomas Church on Cathal Brugha Street is run as an African church, with a Nigerian priest in charge.
But none of the traditional churches has anything to do with the
burgeoning African house churches, the colour and noise of whose
services add a new dimension to Irish Christianity. Which Christian
group would you attend if you were to come back to Ireland today? –
Yours, etc, ROBERT MacCARTHY. 

Diarmaid Ferriter  

Professor of modern Irish history, UCD  

Dear
St Patrick – We Irish need to start over again, and during this time of
year, when we pay homage to your influence and legacy, perhaps you
would be kind enough to intervene in order to place us on the right
path. As a student of history I understand from your fifth-century
writings that, after your enforced captivity here, you escaped on a
ship. You entered into terms with the sailors but, in your own words,
“refused, for fear of God, to suck their nipples”.

I
know this frank assertion created some discomfort for those who sought
to propagate your name and heritage in subsequent centuries, but I
believe it was your instinctive reaction to what you described as a
detestation of “cults or idols and abominations”, which you were
determined to dedicate your life to overthrowing. Such pagan practices
as the sucking of nipples to pledge loyalty were obviously seen by you
as particularly odious.

Sixteen
centuries on we Irish find ourselves in a similar position to you on
that ship. Our sailors and captors are the IMF and the EU, and they too
are demanding that we suck on their nipples in order to keep the State
afloat. Aside from the humiliation and subjection involved in their
tactics, we cannot afford the terms we have agreed with them. Actually
we didn’t agree to the terms at all; we were loaded on to the ship
without being consulted, destination unknown.

On
the subject of destiny, perhaps you could use your influence to banish
from this island the sin of undue deference to overlords whose only
demonstrable faith is in money, banks and interest rates. I understand
that, following your escape back to your family, you received a vision
at your parents’ home and returned to Ireland to baptise thousands.

Would
it be possible, after all these years, for you to make your own
visitation? Maybe you could also offer words of advice or wisdom on how
to survive six years in the west of Ireland with little to do except
watch over a few scrawny sheep and keep an eye on the weather. There are
many people in that situation in Ireland today.

If
you’re worried about the appropriateness of a visitation, having heard
that many of us in the modern era have gone off the whole religion thing
you were so keen to promote, rest assured: we’re back on our knees, day
and night, and a visitation from you could give us hope that a
nipple-rejecting, God-embracing approach could work wonders. – Yours,
etc,  DIARMAID FERRITER  

St Patrick's week in The Irish Times  

MONDAY

What’s on where? A week-long guide to the St Patrick’s Festival and other events all over Ireland
 
https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2011/0312/1224291934541.html