Kevin Williamson (a convert) closes his Tuesday newsletter today with the following:
Today is the feast day of St. Brigid, who is one of the patrons of Ireland and a great favorite of the pooh-poohers and would-be sophisticates, who revel in the fact that St. Brigid is a pretty clearly mythological figure, the pre-Christian pagan goddess …
Kevin Williamson (a convert) closes his Tuesday newsletter today with the following:
Today is the feast day of St. Brigid, who is one of the patrons of Ireland and a great favorite of the pooh-poohers and would-be sophisticates, who revel in the fact that St. Brigid is a pretty clearly mythological figure, the pre-Christian pagan goddess Brigid swallowed whole by Catholic hagiography in the early days of Irish Christianity. This would not have come as a surprise to early Irish Christians, at least some of whom seem to have been well aware that the saint was none other than the goddess in minimal disguise and put that observation into writing more than 1,000 years ago. The church has long experience with this kind of thing: St. Christopher medals remain popular devotional items, but there isn’t much reason to suppose that the story about his carrying Jesus across a river on his back is anything other than a “charming legend,” to use a frequently recurring phrase in the Catholic literature. I would think that people who cannot quite agree about what happened in the last election — or what is happening right now with Covid or Russia or the economy — would understand that any enterprise that is still going after 2,000 years is going to have some stories attached to it, some legends, and some myths — and some outright fabrications, too.
The Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc once observed: “The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine — no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.” It is a great big vineyard, one that happily makes room for such knaves as us.
Kevin Williamson (a convert) closes his Tuesday newsletter today with the following:
Today is the feast day of St. Brigid, who is one of the patrons of Ireland and a great favorite of the pooh-poohers and would-be sophisticates, who revel in the fact that St. Brigid is a pretty clearly mythological figure, the pre-Christian pagan goddess Brigid swallowed whole by Catholic hagiography in the early days of Irish Christianity. This would not have come as a surprise to early Irish Christians, at least some of whom seem to have been well aware that the saint was none other than the goddess in minimal disguise and put that observation into writing more than 1,000 years ago. The church has long experience with this kind of thing: St. Christopher medals remain popular devotional items, but there isn’t much reason to suppose that the story about his carrying Jesus across a river on his back is anything other than a “charming legend,” to use a frequently recurring phrase in the Catholic literature. I would think that people who cannot quite agree about what happened in the last election — or what is happening right now with Covid or Russia or the economy — would understand that any enterprise that is still going after 2,000 years is going to have some stories attached to it, some legends, and some myths — and some outright fabrications, too.
The Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc once observed: “The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine — no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.” It is a great big vineyard, one that happily makes room for such knaves as us.
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2022/02/01/public-holiday-marking-st-brigids-feast-established-in-ireland/