Morality without god

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Of GREGORY'S time. If that is "Pope Gregory the Great" this was before the RCC even existed as such, and although the RCC has since bestowed the title of Pope on him, he was not called Pope at the time and in fact he repudiated being called "Universal Bishop" saying anyone accepting that title would be the forerunner of Antichrist.

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I don't think that the title "Pope" is an important doctrinal issue in itself. If that's the only point of agreement that you can find, then I think we can regard your claim as unfounded.

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The Irish church was independent of Rome in those years both literally and doctrinally.

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More accurately it had been founded by the Roman church and left alone for a while. The doctrines either came from Rome, or were home-grown. And the home-grown doctrines don't seem to be ones that you particularly agree with.

"Point of agreement"???? With what? I wasn't presenting the title "Pope" as the ONLY anything, more as one indication that the RCC didn't yet exist and that its doctrines at that time were not yet the abominations they later became. Gregory the Great was the Bishop of Rome, one among many, making no claims to higher authority over the rest of the churches, which is what the title "Universal Bishop" meant to him, the forerunner of Antichrist as he called it. This very claim was later realized under the title "Pope" -- the claim to be the ruler of all the churches. The RCC as such is thought by many to have been inaugurated after Gregory the Great, in 606, and I think this is because at that time the claim to be the preeminent Bishop ruling over all the others was declared despite Gregory's warning.So the title "Pope" IS important, in fact crucial to the development of the RCC.I don't know when all the characteristic RCC doctrines were introduced, seems they came one after another over time once the basic structure was in place, i.e., the papacy, which itself acquired power after power over time, but that's a study in itself that I'm not up on.I was simply stating my impression that the church under the Bishop of Rome was not yet different from the other churches in the time of Gregory the Great, and not yet putting itself above the others. If you have specific information otherwise, I'd be happy to consider it. I'm sure this is just your own wild opinion based on no evidence whatever. Or, produce the evidence please. The Irish Church, like the English church, was not established by Rome at all, but by evangelists independent of Rome, such as Patrick. He was NOT a Roman Catholic, and as I said the RCC as such didn't even exist yet anyway. The RCC simply co-opted him when they took over the Irish Church and claimed him as their own, dressed up his image in that ridiculous Bishop's pointy hat, which in reality he certainly did NOT wear EVER. I've read enough about Patrict to know that he was a rustic and had nothing to do with Rome, and the churches he founded, or helped found in Ireland had nothing to do with Rome. This is why the early Irish Church is called the Celtic Church, it was NOT Roman in the slightest. They came from the evangelists who brought the gospel to them, such as Patrick. They may have developed some home-grown features, but again you are just blowing hot air, an opinion you got from who knows where. I don't know enough about their doctrines to know what I would or would not agree with. Perhaps Son Goku will come back and fill us in about this. My only claim in this discussion is that none of the early Irish Church was connected with Rome. Period.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Your own source, Philip Schaff, identifies Patrick as Prospers Palladius appointed by Rome as Bishop over the Irish church! Hardly someone who had "nothing to do with Rome"And if you don't know the doctrines of the Celtic church, how can you know that they would have agreed with them? Why should they be any more to your liking than those of the Orthodox Church ? There's no reason, for instance, to imagine that the Celtic church would have endorsed sola scriptura.

I guess it is your definition that determines this not what the world at large uses. It was at about this time the term Pope was used for the Bishop of Rome. In the 11th century it became an official title but was the de facto name for the Bishop of Rome for many centuries before.Prior to the 6th century it was a the term for all Bishops. So that really complicates the whole Pope=anti-christ claim doesn't it. Source please. This claim is laughable and you have provided no evidence for the claim.

This comment is stunning in its ridiculousness. Just a cursory look at history will show that the Roman bishops sen missionaries to England and Ireland. Patrick was sent by the roman church and was a bishop of the roman church.Prior to this Christianity did flourish in some areas of England. This is your vaunted "celtic church". Yes there were differences between the "celtic church" and the roman church, but historians do not consider it separate from the rest of western european christianity.Kathleen Hughes, "The Celtic Church: Is This a Valid Concept?", O'Donnell lectures in Celtic Studies, University of Oxford 1975 (published in Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies, 1 [1981], pp. 1—20).Wendy Davies, "The Myth of the Celtic Church", in The Early Church in Wales and the West, Oxbow Monograph, no. 16, edited by Nancy Edwards and Alan Lane, 12—21. Oxford: Oxbow, 1992.

The fact that the Irish church was based upon monasteries and not dioceses seems to destroy Faiths argument that the Celtic church was more like her beliefs than the Roman Catholic Church.

Anything the RCC says about Patrick is suspect.I'd done a post on a book about Patrick's life at my Faith's Corner blog a few years ago, and here's another one on my Catholicism blog where I link to a talk by ex-priest Richard Bennett who makes it clear that the RC view of Patrick is a complete fraud.ABE: As Bennett makes clear Palladius was NOT Patrick but the RCC blurred them together. Patrick himself writes about Palladius who was a Roman missionary who came later. So Schaff got it wrong, and Schaff is considered to be a Romanist so that figures.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Anything the RCC says about Patrick is suspect.

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Last I heard, Schaff was not the RCC. And you are the one who chose to reference his work.As for the rest, your pride and hate don't make you right. Schaff was definitely a Protestant, for one.

Well to be more detailed:Irish churches explicit state that they drew their authority from Rome and the Pope. For example the Madslechtae a legal text composed in the 9th century contains two works, the Hibernensis and the Liber Angeli, (along with other works, such as how to rate Latin scholars!) which acknowledge the preeminence of Rome as sedes apostolica "apostolic see" and caput urbium "chief of cities".Specifically it says the church is the greatest thing on Earth, the bishop is the greatest one in the church and (translating myself, I couldn't find one online):Is espac as uaisliu db-sidhe easbuc ecasla Peatair
"It is the bishop of the church of Peter (i.e. Rome) who is the highest bishop among them."And the Hibernensis is the work of legal experts who were more tolerant of non-Roman views. (Sharpe, "Armagh and Rome in the seventh century", in N Chathin and Richter (1984)). There was another faction the so called Romani who strongly advocated for completely following Roman doctrine.Edited by Son Goku, : Pointless "of"

It is probably true they are not the same person, but tradition has melded them into one. I very much doubt there was any conspiracy to do this, since this all happened over 1500 years ago.Palladius did not come after Patrick but before. They were probably contemporaries. When Patrick returned to Ireland he returned as an ordained Bishop. Ordained by the Roman church. Show sources for this don't just assert. As there are only two written works accepted as Patrick please show where he mentions Palladius and what he says about him.The only thing I can find that you might be referring to is the seventh century life of St. Patrick by Muircu Maccumachthenus in the "Book of Armaugh".

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"Palladius was ordained and sent to covert this land lying under wintry cold, but God hindered him, for no man can receive anything from earth unless it be given to him from heaven; and neither did those fierce and cruel men receive his doctrine readily, nor did he himself wish to spend time in a strange land, but returned to him who sent him. On his return hence, however, having crossed the first sea and commenced his land journey, he died in the territory of the Britons."

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SourceNow if you have something from Patrick himself I would love to see it.

Not according to everything I've read and heard, except that they WERE contemporaries but Patrick came before Palladius. He did become a bishop but in his own Celtic church. Again, Rome had nothing to do with any of it.The impression I get is that Patrick made such a profound impact on Ireland over at least fifty years of evangelism and church planting that there's no way he could have been confused with the Rome-sent Palladius.I just listened again to the talk on Patrick by ex-priest Richard Bennett that I'd linked at my blog about Catholicism: The Real Saint Patrick because I thought he'd said Patrick himself wrote about Palladius. But this time I couldn't find that statement. I may have to listen again later.But he does list many historians who say that Palladius was not Patrick, that Palladius was sent by Rome AFTER Patrick had been there many years and established hundreds of churches, that Patrick's teachings were Bible-based and that Palladius was not successful at imposing Roman Catholic doctrine on the people. This does imply that there WAS a distinctive Roman Catholic doctrine in 432 when Palladius went to Ireland, which surprises me. In any case Bennett makes much of the date 405 as the year when Patrick went to Ireland. If you want to hear that statement it's at about 20:14 minutes into the talk, and he goes on to say that it's important because of the claims about Palladius, which he as an Irish Catholic had grown up believing. He names many historians as source for this information but the sound quality is bad so I missed some of it and may have garbled others: at 20:20 he mentions an Irish bishop who gives this information, then historians Wylie, Ussher, Ware and others.The quote you give about "Palladius" gives no hint about any of that.AbE: Almost forgot to mention that he saysl, about 29:45, that the monasteries Patrick established were not like RC monasteries, but were places for intensive study of the Bible and training of missionaries, and that the monks later went back into normal life, married and so on. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Well you are wrong.You have provided no sources other than a talk by Richard Bennett. This is not a source. He is a well known catholic basher and has no academic credentials whatsoever.If you did even the basic research on Palladius and Patrick you would see that you are wrong about just about everything. If he did he was lying. because this is true, but tradition has melded them together. Not true. Do some basic research.

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Most modern scholars follow a variant of T. F. O'Rahilly's "Two Patricks" theory.[13] That is to say, many of the traditions later attached to Saint Patrick actually concerned Palladius, who Prosper of Aquitaine's Chronicle says was sent by Pope Celestine I as the first bishop to Irish Christians in 431.

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So you believe that report, obviously written from the RCC point of view, and I believe mine. "Most modern scholars..." as opposed to Bennett's "The best historians..." The facts are no better on your side than mine, though I'd say mine are most likely more trustworthy because I know the RCC loves to twist history.I guess anyone who has learned that Catholicism is false Christianity is a Catholic Basher, according to you, the easiest sort of slam against honest people who learn facts that make them change sides. But Richard Bennett is no basher, he presents facts and history, period, and he loved his Catholic Church and still loves his Catholic friends, who of course he would like to see saved instead of on their way to Hell. You ought to hear his story some time, it took him years to get up the courage to leave the RCC after learning about all its errors.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No way, T.F O'Rahilly got in a lot of trouble with the Irish Catholic hierarchy for saying that there was two Patricks. He worked in DIAS (Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies) which also had a theoretical physics department which at the time was discussing quantum gravity, where the universe could just come into being. I remember when I was young that a lot of Catholics used to say disparagingly of the Institute:
"They say there's no God and two Patricks".

Did I get Theodoric wrong then? Seemed to me he was agreeing with the interpretation of two Patricks as the most common view which I figured must be the RCC view since he was agreeing with it, or at least the idea that much of what was said about Patrick was really Palladius.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.