Email from OCPAC St Patrick and a moment in history that saved Western Civilization Published Monday, March 17, 2025 NEXT MEETING MEETING 2025 April 2, 2025 COMINIUS: DETAILS BELOW Send this newsletter to a friend here. BOB LINN HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION St. Patrick's Ireland One Man Who Saved A Nation One Nation that Saved the West  About 400 years after the crucifixion and ascension of Christ, the civilized world faced a moment of darkness. Civilization underwent unanticipated birth pangs as it transitioned to history's next period. The Roman Empire fell and the transition from the thousand-year classic era to give way to the coming thousand-year medieval period. Beginning December 31, AD 406, hordes of barbarians crossed the Rhine into Roman territory. This began a prolonged invasion which easily overwhelmed Rome’s dwindling defenses. Roman territories were burned, looted, murdered and raped as the world’s classical era came to an end. Scholar and writer, Thomas Cahill, in his book How the Irish Saved Civilization, wrote: As the Roman Empire fell, unwashed barbarians descended on Roman cities, looting artifacts and burning books. About five years earlier, AD 401, on the distant western shores of Europe, God had already initiated civilization’s recovery. It came in the shape of a poorly educated sixteen-year-old English boy named Patrick and his capture at the hands of Irish slave traders. The barbarians who crossed the Rine in AD 406 had nothing on the Irish who were already heavily engaged in brutality and the capturing of slaves. Rome had long ago deserted its protection of England’s borders. Thomas Cahill, writes: In the slavery business, no tribe was fiercer or more feared than the Irish. And the Irish were ruthless and feared for their practice not just of slavery but of human sacrifice. For Patrick, it was a fearful beginning. He ran from house to house in a village being destroyed that day by the Irish slave traders. He was among the many who were captured, taken to Ireland, and sold into slavery. It was in Ireland that he committed his life to Christ and in his sixth year, miraculously was able to escape and sail back to England. Patrick was twenty-two years old Saint Patrick’s Day commemorates this moment in History The mission Patrick would in time complete was twofold. First, he would turn Ireland from a nation of uncivilized, illiterate, and immoral slave-owners into a Christian nation. Second, he would produce Irish leaders who would evangelize all of Europe and save Western Civilization. Graced with a moment of flawless splendor, the Irish rose from darkness to re-ignite Europe’s lamp and save civilization. It was not until Patrick was forty that he heard the call of God very clearly to return to Ireland and seek to convert this ruthless and uncivilized mass of people who had enslaved him so many years ago. A people who would think nothing of killing him and offering him as a human sacrifice to their gods. The story is told extraordinarily well by William J. Federer in his article this past weekend in the American Minute. You may find it here. The story of Ireland’s transformation is as amazing as any story ever told. Today, we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day because St. Patrick’s life’s work in Ireland produced more than 300 churches and 120,000 baptisms. And Ireland produced missionaries who transformed Scotland, England, and all of Europe. The Christianization of Ireland meant also the Christianization of Western Civilization. It also meant educating the Irish. Thomas Cahill wrote of the impact of St. Patrick’s ministry in Ireland and Ireland’s impact on the world: The Irish, who were just learning to read and write, took up the great labor of copying all of Western literature – everything they could lay their hands on . . . Patrick’s gift to the Irish was his Christianity . . . Christianity that completely enculturated itself into the Irish scene . . . which transformed Ireland into Something New, something never seen before – a Christian culture, where slavery and human sacrifice became unthinkable, and warfare diminished markedly . . . These transformed warrior children of Patrick’s heart lay down their swords of battle, flung away the knives of sacrifice, and cast aside the chains of slavery . . . it was Patrick’s Christian mission that nurtured Irish scholarship and caused it to blossom. Patrick understood that Christianity could not survive without literacy. And so, the first Irish Christians became the first Irish literates . . . The Irish enshrined literacy as their central religious act. In a land where literacy had previously been unknown. The Irish built monasteries which became like universities where thousands came from all over Ireland to learn. Soon they came also from England and then from all of Europe. On an island called Skellig Michael, located on the southwest coast of Ireland, Irish Christians founded a prominent monastery which was among Ireland’s educational strongholds. Of Ireland’s monasteries, including this little place in the sea, historian Kenneth Clark wrote: It is hard to believe that for quite a long time – almost a hundred years – western Christianity survived by clinging to places like Skellig Michael, a pinnacle of rock eighteen miles from the Irish coast, rising 700 feet out of the sea. A product of Ireland’s Christian transformation was a man who converted to Christianity named Columcille. Columcille was born a century after St. Patrick and was the greatest Irishman since. He founded more than forty monasteries in Ireland and sixty in Scotland. Columcille brought Ireland’s Christianity to Scottland and France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. As Thomas Cahill writes: Latin literature would surely have been lost without the Irish, and illiterate Europe would hardly have developed its great national literatures without the example of the Irish . . . Beyond that, there would have perished in the west not only literacy but all the habits of mind that encourage thought . . . wherever they went, they brought their love of learning and their skills in bookmaking . . . They reestablished literacy and breathed new life into the exhausted literary culture of Europe. And that is how the Irish saved civilization. History is fraught with stories of cultural darkness followed by times of great light. Because of the work of the Irish, Europe was Christianized laying the groundwork for the amazing cluster of Christian men whose lives were devoted to the Scripture and who were the architects of the scientific revolution. A revolution which has transformed society in countless ways. Men like Newton, Euler, Copernicus, and scores of others owe a debt to St. Patrick and the Irish for the Christian foundation which was also the foundation for their science. For some of our past articles regarding how the Christianization of Europe fostered the scientific revolution, see the July 15, 2024 issue here, last year's article on St. Patrick here, and some notes on the fibonacci sequence, Einstein, and the impossibility of scientific analysis without a foundation in the transcendent here. James Hannam, PhD (history of science, University of Cambridge), is the author of The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution. He writes concerning the Christians who began in the Middle Ages to develop the science that became the scientific revolution: For them, science was the study of God’s creation. The metaphysical assumptions of Christianity, unlike those of the Greeks or even Muslims, turned out to be extremely conducive to uncovering true knowledge about nature. They weren’t trying to, but it was Christians who laid the foundations for modern science. They were simply studying God’s creation so that they could become better theologians and Christians. The metaphysical background to Christianity turned out to be uniquely conducive to successfully understanding the working of nature. Atheist historians such as Richard Carrier are wrong to say Christians neglected science and that pagans were on the point of a scientific revolution. On the contrary, Christianity was a necessary, if not sufficient, cause of the flowering of modern science. Scripture makes clear that the world and the progression of its history is in the hands of God. Our incapacity to understand every twist and turn should not cause us to question divine providence. At age 16, forced suddenly by rough and barbaric slave traders, sold as a slave to an equally barbaric Irish druid, Patrick could not have understood that the apparent founding face of providence would, in the larger picture of the history of mankind, in fact the smile of providence. Our duty is to walk obediently before God and to obey His calling on our lives to see His kingdom manifest on the earth as we seek to play our role in the discipling of nations (Matthew 28). God bless! Thank you all for being a part of the preservation of truth in our Oklahoma culture! Send this newsletter to a friend here NEXT MEETING APRIL 2, 2025 Wade Burleson will interview author Tim Price who published in English The Labrynth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart. The book was the forerunner to Pilgrim's Progress by the man for whom the United Nations bestows its annual Teacher of the Year award. SAVE THE DATE: TUESDAY APRIL 15, 2025 7 PM History Center Special Guests LAST MEETING . . . EDUARDO BOLSONARO BRAZILIAN CONGRESSMAN Son of Former Brazil President Watch the presentation here. Watch the entire meeting here. DR. LAUREN SCHWARTZ AND 2024's MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS Watch the presentation here. Watch the entire meeting here. SENATOR SHANE JETT EXPLAINS HIS BRAZIL CONNECTIONS Next to Donald Trump, Senator Jett is the best known American statesman in Brazil. His connections date back to the work he did there as a part of his university degree program in international business. He has maintained contact with key players there including with the Bolsonaro family. Jair Bolsonaro is the Donald Trump of Brazil and is the only hope Brazil people have of re-discovering the freedoms the communist party has removed. 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