Cardinal's Column 3/14/04

Who wears green on St. Patrick’s Day?

St. Patrick’s Day has become more and more of a celebration for everyone in recent years, because something of the Irish story belongs to the world. People from Ireland have gone around the globe, bringing with them some of the spirit of Ireland even while they built a new life in the places to which they came. An integral part of that Irish presence, at least since the days of St. Patrick himself, has been the Catholic faith.

Father Bill Corcoran, pastor of St. Linus parish in Oak Lawn, wrote a doctoral dissertation in history for Loyola University last year, and I finally got around to reading it a few months ago. His topic is the generation of Irish immigrants who arrived in Chicago after World War II, between 1946 and 1967. St. Patrick himself was an immigrant, not from Ireland but to it, first unwillingly as a slave and then, the second time around, willingly as a missionary bishop. Taken by pirates from his home, probably in Wales, around the end of the fourth century, he was sold to a pagan Irish chieftain. Patrick’s life was first destroyed and then reformed. In the midst of his hard and lonely life of servitude, from being a halfhearted Christian, he turned to God. Years later, he described what had happened to him: “The love of God and the fear of him surrounded me more and more. And faith grew.”

Patrick escaped. The only ship that would pick him up brought him to France. There he got into a monastery school, became a priest, visited Rome and finally returned to Britain and his family. Perhaps he was hoping to lead a peaceful life there as a parish priest, but God’s plan was different. Patrick in a vision heard “the voice of the Irish” calling him: “We appeal to you, servant of God, to come and walk among us.” The vision was backed up by a letter from the Pope, who appointed him “the bishop of the Irish who believe in Christ.” He returned to Ireland, perhaps around 435 A.D.

Back in Ireland, he was not well received. Immigrants often are not; missionaries even less so. Earlier Christian missionaries had brought the faith to Ireland but had not succeeded in changing the ways of a people shaped by a natural religion that left them strangers to Christ. The leaders of that religion, the druids, tried more than once to kill Patrick. He wrote, “I fear none of these things. I have cast myself into the hands of God who rules everywhere.” “I came to the Irish heathens to preach the Gospel and to put up with insults from unbelievers. I heard my mission abused. I endured many persecutions. Should I be worthy, I am ready even to give my life promptly and gladly for Christ’s name. It is in Ireland that I wish to spend my life until I die. I give thanks to my God who has kept me faithful in the day of trial so that today I offer service to him confidently, the sacrifice of my life to Christ my Lord.”

Patrick loved the Irish with Christ’s own love. That is why he could bring them to conversion. The legacy of his preaching and his organizing of the Church in Ireland was, in part, the great Irish missionary movement of monks and nuns to Europe in the days when the civilization that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire was coming painfully to birth. The same missionary impetus in the 19th and 20th centuries brought priests, religious sisters and brothers and lay men and women who gave their lives to proclaim, with love, who Christ is and to bring Christ’s ways to all the continents. The results of their efforts are evident in the lives of many of Irish descent in Chicago today.

Father Corcoran’s book sorts out the active religious and social life of the post-war Irish immigrants to Chicago. Devout. Mass attendance was a given. They loved religious practices, said the rosary, attended novenas and prayed daily. They had particular devotion to the Blessed Mother, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to a whole litany of saints. They fit the traditional description of Catholic people of prayer. But their stories also show how faith carries a people beyond the ordinary events of life, especially in their profound appreciation of the Eucharist. The Blessed Sacrament transformed their lives.

They were notably generous in their financial support of the Church. They saw generosity as an expression of their responsibility for their parish. They served on school boards, in various organizations and sodalities and looked actively to the maintenance of parish properties. They were ready to offer advice and to help shape the vision that motivated their community. A deep respect for the authority of the Church and for the person of their priest in no way impeded them from making their influence felt in the running of the parish. They were not shy; and if they disagreed with something, they made their opinion known.

They had a deep concern for handing on the faith. They taught their children by the active example of their own religious practice. They spoke with pride of those children who were living the faith and with sorrow of any who had strayed, following them with fervent prayer. They all understood that the faith was part of who they were. Just as they hoped their children would always know they were of Irish origin, they prayed that they would grow up as active Catholics in America.

Much of their story might sound quaint to more cynical ears today. But the freedom that comes from faith and the hope that comes from God shaped lives happier than those of many today. Theirs was the freedom and hope that sustained a people for fifteen hundred years. It’s not entirely clear what comes next, for the Irish here or in Ireland itself.

What would St. Patrick say of the Irish today? He would say that he loves them still. Then he would ask if they’d been to Mass last Sunday. May all of us, whether we wear green or not, enjoy a happy St. Patrick’s Day this March 17.