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D r a g n e t
Who Kissed the Blarney Stone?
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This Rock
Volume 3, Number 11
 November 1992 
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Never trust the Irish - at least not all of them, and at least not when it comes to history. All along we had thought of St. Patrick not just as the inspirer of a great American cathedral, not just as a man whose exploits led to what once was a great annual parade through the streets of New York, but first of all as a Catholic missionary who brought largely pagan Ireland solidly into the faith and more than a missionary, a great saint and a great bishop.
But we were mistaken. Or so says D. James Kennedy, head of Coral Ridge Ministries, in a booklet called St. Patrick: Texts That Have Changed Lives. Kennedy straightens us out on Patrick.
"One: He wasn't Irish." Well, we sort of suspected he wasn't, since if he came to Ireland to evangelize, he must have come from somewhere else, right? From what Patrick said about himself, he born in Roman Britain and was the son of Calpornius, a decuiro (alderman) who later became a deacon. (Kennedy says Calpornius was "a clergyman in the English church.")
"Two: He wasn't born on March 17." Whew! That's good to know. After all, other saints' feast days fall either on the dates they died or on (more or less) arbitrarily selected dates.
"Three: He didn't drive the snakes out of Ireland." It seems there weren't any there to begin with, explains Kennedy. So that's why Patrick never was adopted as the patron of backwoods snake handlers!
"Four: He wasn't really Roman Catholic and he may never have had anything to say about the shamrock and the Trinity." Now, Dr. Kennedy, you've gone too far. If Patrick wasn't a Catholic, why did he consent to be ordained a bishop by Pope Celestine in succession to Bishop (not Dr., Rev., or Mr.) Palladius?
Contrary to what many people think, Ireland was not entirely pagan when Patrick first arrived; it had a Catholic hierarchy before his time, with Bishop Palladius at the head, but the practice of the faith was not widespread - there were many pagans - or, for that matter, very deep. The faith was not as ingrained as it should have been in the Catholics themselves. This dual problem Patrick ultimately remedied.
Another question for Dr. Kennedy. If Patrick wasn't Catholic, why did he establish monasteries in Ireland - surely an odd thing for a proto-Protestant to do! Ah, but Kennedy doesn't say anything about the monasteries. He prefers to note that Patrick "established over three hundred churches and yet the church that he established was very different from the Roman Church of the Middle Ages."
Whoa! Did you catch that bait and switch? Patrick established "churches," which is to say he was a builder of buildings and local congregations, but "the church he established" - who said he established a church in the sense of an independent ecclesiastical institution? Patrick never claimed that. He merely extended the reach of the institution he already belonged to, namely the Catholic Church.
"The church founded by Patrick [was] an evangelical church," insists Kennedy, and it "finally was subdued to the authority of Rome centuries after Patrick died." The poor man is unable to distinguish between disciplinary disagreements with Rome, which many national churches have had over the centuries but which don't imply any lack of corporate unity, and outright independence of what Vatican II called "ecclesial communities."
A last, troubling point - troubling for D. James Kennedy. Toward the end of his life Patrick made a forty-day retreat from which the famous Croagh Patrick pilgrimage derives. Our question to the Presbyterian televangelist: Since when have retreats been Evangelical institutions?
You have just read about a television personality saying peculiar things. Now let's turn to a radio personality, Harold Camping, president of Family Radio, a network of 38 Christian stations around the country. Camping claims the world is going to end on September 6, 1994.
To demonstrate how serious he is, Camping, who works out of Oakland, California, has written a 543-page book called 1994? It was published in September.
Does all this sound repetitive? Do you have the vague sense that Camping is not the first to give a date for the Last Days? Maybe you remember what happened to William Miller, the precursor of Seventh-Day Adventism, in 1843 and 1844, or to Judge Rutherford of the Jehovah's Witnesses in 1925, or to Edgar Whisenant in 1988 and 1989, or others we have chronicled in these pages.
But Camping is different. He has a special scenario. Others have been saying that earthquakes, killer bees, and the destruction of the ozone are signs that the end is near. None of these natural or man-altered phenomena have anything to do with the timing of the end, says Camping. The end is indicated by the decline in morality. We have less than two years to go, and, because of that, we need to redouble our efforts. So, please, he asks, send in your contributions to Family Radio.
We would have a little more confidence in Camping's prognostication if he, say, were to put the entire assets of Family Radio into irrevocable trust for (to name an organization at random) Catholic Answers, to be transferred to us on September 7, 1994. If the world ends the day before, Camping won't have any use for the assets anyway. And if he reduces his position to the standard rapture scenario in which "real" Christians are taken away and only "phony" Christians, such as Catholics, are left behind with unbelievers, then why have his radio empire go to waste - wouldn't it be better if Catholics use it than if it were taken over by outright secularists?
We gets lots of phone calls from people wanting in-depth information on particular theological topics or on non-Catholic movements and organizations. Even when we know the answers to the questions, we don't always have as much time to spend talking as we might like. Sometimes the calls inundate us.
We suspect we're not the only ones. Scott and Kimberly Hahn must have phone receivers growing out of their ears by now - they always seem to be on the phone to someone. (And some of those someones call them at home at ungodly hours, imposing on the Hahns' private time.) Scott and Kimberly have never said as much to us, but we suspect they'd sometimes like to be left alone to enjoy their kids and to do their "regular" work.
We think we have a way to help them, ourselves, and, most importantly, Catholics throughout the country. We're thinking of putting together a list of about twenty experts in various areas (dogma, history, apologetic techniques, cults and sects, the works). We're looking for people whose backgrounds and knowledge are extensive and who wish to help the Church by having inquirers referred to them. If you are such a person (don't hide behind false modesty!), contact Patrick Madrid of our staff at (619) 541-1131 about having your name, address, and number on a list of experts. Folks out there need you!
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