Celtic Church

{{Christianity}}
The '''Celtic Church''' is a semi-mythical, quasi-historical quasi-entity, which existed in north-west [[Europe]] in the latter half of the first millennium CE. Because the [[Celts]] function as a kind of "indigenous"/"tribal" proxy for people of European origin,<ref>i.e. the role taken up by [[Native Americans]], Australian Aborigines etc elsewhere.</ref> wooly thinkers frequently associate them with [[Noble savage |urban fantasies about nature and primitive life]]. And the Celtic Church/Christianity [[Conspiracy theory | guff out there]] reflects this.

==Fantasy==
Some popular misconceptions:
* The Celtic Church was a [[New Age]] before its time, full of [[druid]]s, who loved plants and animals, and the great outdoors.
* [[Galatians]] good, Romans bad.
* It was an independent church, theologically uncontaminated by Rome, Alexandria, etc.
* All of its prayers were in English (and some were unheard of before the 19th and 20th centuries).
* Christian Celts liked synthesisers and harps in their music.
* They worshipped rocks.
* They didn't make [[war]].

Basically all of this 
is design
serves to make anti-Catholicism, [[pantheism]] and New Agey-ness a little more palatable to a middle-class Christian audience.

==Reality==
Contrary to popular belief, Celtic Christianity was not a separate entity from the [[Roman Catholic Church]] at all, just a somewhat detached portion, that ended up getting cut off from Rome and Constantinople by a series of Germanic invasions and population movements in northern Europe.<ref>{{wpa | Migration Period}}</ref> As a result, Celtic Christians developed some idiosyncrasies such as hereditary abbots, funny tonsures, and their own way of calculating the date of [[Easter]]. The discrepancies got sorted out at the Synod of Whitby in 664 CE, when the Vatican's caucus basically bullied its way into "correcting" many of these "errors".

A few genuine facts about the Celtic church:
* It produced wonderful manuscripts. Some of the best illuminated works of Western Europe including the Book of Kells and the Lindisfarne Gospels came out of this tradition.
* It had a lot of [[saint]]s. And we mean a lot. Some of them you'll never have heard of, guaranteed. 
* Some of the Celtic saints are Christianized versions of ancient Celtic gods such as [[Saint Brigid#The goddess|Bride/Bridget]], but this was not unusual at the time. The Celtic Church was not that much more [[Paganism| "pagan"]] than many of the other tendencies in Christendom. 
* Some of their churchmen such as St. Columba were actually warriors and statesmen, rather than pacifists.
* They helped [re-]Christianize [[England]] (especially the North) and set up educational institutions in many parts of Europe.
* None of them wrote cute prayers in flowery English. Some of its members could speak Anglo-Saxon though.
* They loved being hermits, and living on small islands. That part is true.
* Their clergymen could marry. Many Scottish and Irish surnames have ecclesiastical origins e.g. MacNab, MacPherson, Haggarty etc. Note, however, that married clergy were also not unusual at the time; married priests in the [[Latin]] Church, while officially forbidden, were generally tolerated until the eleventh century.

In the end, the [[Protestant Reformation| Reformation]] destroyed many Celtic church traditions for good, particularly in [[Scotland]], [[Wales]] and Cornwall.

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20130802184827/http://www.bridge-house.org.uk/ethos/celtic-christian-spirituality A fairly typical webpage full of Celtic Christian guff] (note the unreliable sources)

==References==
{{reflist|2|80%}}

[[Category:Catholicism]]
[[Category:Christianity]]
[[Category:Ireland]]
[[Category:New Age]]
[[Category:Woo]]

Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Ireland, New Age, Woo