From: frankm@microsoft.com (Frank R.A.J. Maloney)
Subject: Re: Celts-Christianity-Catholicism
Date: 10 Oct 92 19:39:32 GMT
Organization: Microsoft Windows/DOS Users Ed Group

In article <9OCT92.21290217@enh.nist.gov> downey@enh.nist.gov writes:
>
[deletion]
>
>Well, if you are referring to the "Celtic Church" before the coming
>of Christianity, I say it definitely existed - What about the
>Druids?  If I have misunderstood and you are talking about
>the "Celtic Church" after the introduction of Christianity, then
>I would say it was a "different" kind - a sort of mingling of
>the old and the new - pagan + Christianity.  This is termed
>"Celtic Christianity" and in fact there is a book by that name.
>

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if you're wrong in both
cases, at least to some degree as far as the Catholic Church
in Ireland is concerned. The Irish Church has a long history
of organizational and doctrinal independence from the See of
Rome. According to Giraldus Cambrensis, Pope Hadrian IV (the
Englishman Nicholas Breakspear) issued the bull Laudabiliter
after the Henry II of England sent John of Salisbury to Rome
with a subtle offer to restore social and papal obedience to
Ireland in exchange for possession of the island.
Laudabiliter granted Ireland to Henry on condition of
restoring orderly government, bringing the Irish clergy
into better cooperation with Rome, and arranging that
Peter's Pence be paid yearly for every house in Ireland.
Henry landed 4000 men near Waterford in 1171 and quickly
received the support of the Irish clergy. A synod of Irish
prelates declared their full submission to the Pope, and
decreed that thereafter the ritual of the Irish Church
should conform to that of England and Rome. Of course, that
was far from the end of the political story, but it was the
end of a distinctive Irish Church.

We know there were Christians in Ireland before 431 because
Prosper of Aquitaine tells us that in that year Palladius
became "the first bishop to the Irish believing in Christ."
Was Palladius St. Patrick is an interesting question and a
possibility, but a conjectural one. However, the
Christianity of Ireland in the fifth century was modeled on
the episcopal model of the Gallic church. But after
Patrick's death the Irish Church became monastic and
discrete, to use Chadwick's phrase. She refers to Zimmer as
showing the religious vocabulary and language, especially in
reference to the Church rituals, had been borrowed in a
British form already by the fourth, or early fifth century.
"The first stratum of Latin loan-words was just enough to
provide a skeleton service of Christian terminology,
containing 'all the words necessary for a nascent community
with an elementary organization'. But there was no word
for 'bishop'." The Patrician diocesan organization quickly
proved incapable of adaptation to the tribal system of
Ireland. "Its place was therefore taken in the sixth and
seventh centuries by the 'Celtic' Church, in which the
dioceses gave way to the federation of monastic communities,
each with its _paruchia_ under the supreme jurisdiction of
the 'heir' (conarb) of the founder-saint." Patrick's heir
held spiritual authority over a limited paruchia (parish),
mostly the Argialla tribes. There the cult of Patrick was
established and espoused. The expansion of the cult of
Patrick to the whole of Ireland is bound up with the Easter
controversy which racked the Irish Church in the seventh
century. This lack of centrist organization led to great
vigor but it made the Irish Church doomed to defeat against
the organized strength of Rome.

Ireland was a land without cities and the diocesan
episcopacy didn't work. The bishops' roles were liturgical,
but it was the abbots of the scattered monasteries who
managed and organized the real religious centers. In the
beginning of the sixth century the Church in Ireland, Wales,
Britain, was wholly monastic. The monasteries were
independent offshoots of mother houses; there were also the
very isolated hermits. The masses and orders of service were
not uniform. Theologically, the Irish church was completely
orthodox, but otherwise it was practically independent of
Rome.

Irish asceticism evolved into the peregrinatio, a love of
wandering, passing from the familiar and familial to search
for the place of one's resurrection. These early saints were
not missionaries, traveling to Christian communities, even
as far afield as Iceland, as well as to Britain and the
continent. These Culdees (from C\eli D\e, Companions of God)
developed into an organized body in the eighth century, a
highly intellectual order, like the Desert Fathers of
Egypt.

The Easter Controversy got underway in the seventh century.
At issue was the formula for determining the date of Easter.
This was the casus belli but in fact the real problem was
the deep-seated conservatism of the Celtic Church, as well
its pride in own intellectual powers. One direct result was
the sudden outpouring of written literature from the Celtic
Church supporting, explaining, and justifying its traditions
and practices. The writings mostly took the form of
matyrologies, hagiographies, and rules and penitentials. The
influence of the Eastern Church shows in these writings, and
of course the rivalry of Eastern and Western Churches is
part of the desire of Rome to impose its Unitas Catholica on
Celtic regions. The Irish celebrated Easter according to a
reckoning practiced by the early Church but abandoned by
Rome in 343. St. Columban rejected the new Roman method,
saying "The Irish are better astronomers than you Romans."
He asked Pope Gregory the Great to accept the Irish mode of
calculation or be "looked upon as a heretic and repudiated
with scorn by the churches of the West." Indeed, the whole
of ritual and calendar, even the kind of music, was at
issue, with the Celtic Church preserving usages that were
obsolete in Roman practice. The controversy was
superficially settled at the Synod of Whitby in 664, but the
spirit of independence persisted for centuries.

-- 
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
	"Well, I'm a little muddled." -- Glinda