As Ireland's Church Retreats, the Cult of a Female Saint Thrives

[Celerity]

The cult of Saint Brigid, with its emphasis on nature and healing, and its shift away from the patriarchal faith of traditional Catholicism in Ireland, is attracting people from around the world.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/world/europe/ireland-church-female-saint-brigid.html



KILDARE, Ireland — Around the year 480, as legend has it, a freed slave named Brigid founded a convent under an oak in the east of Ireland. To feed her followers, she asked the King of Leinster, who ruled the area, for a grant of land.

When the pagan king refused, she asked him to give her as much land as her cloak would cover. Thinking she was joking, he agreed. But when Brigid threw her cloak on the ground, it spread across 5,000 acres — creating the Curragh plains, which still stretch beside the religious settlement she founded at Kildare (from the Irish Cill Dara, “church of the oak”).



A millennium and a half later, a renewed cult of Saint Brigid is thriving in Kildare, even at a time when the Roman Catholic church is in retreat in Ireland, weakened by clerical sex abuse scandals, growing secularism and — Catholic feminists say — by its refusal, despite a collapse in the numbers of its all-male priesthood, to give equal status to women.

Much of the revitalized interest is the result of the Brigidines’ emphasis on nature, ecology and healing, and their shift away from the patriarchal faith of traditional Irish Catholicism.



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[BlueSky3]

1. Very interesting

Thanks.

[Probatim]

2. I'm down with that.

[Farmer-Rick]

3. Religion without the patriarchs

Sounds better than the Catholics. And without any massive history of abuse and control. I guess they maybe less likely to hurt children and abuse people. But religion can make people act weird.

But really, even one female god err spirit is one too many for me to believe in without any substantial evidence.

[Historic NY]

4. The cross of Saint Brigid

a cross made of rushes by herself has a strong connection to pre- & post-Christianity in Ireland. An early talisman, I have one myself.

[Celerity]

7. ...

[niyad]

5. As any student of paganism or mythology knows, Brigid, "the Exalted One", is the Triple

Goddess of Ireland, Goddess of healing, smithcraft, poetry and much more. Scholars look at the fact that the Goddess Brigid, and the church's saint, share many of the same attributes, including their feast/holy days. The church took many of the pagan deities and made them into saints as a way of bringing the pagan people into the church, jut as they did with the high holy days.

So it is not in the least surprising that women are drawn to Brigid, whether as Triple Goddess or stolen creation of the patriarchal church.

Thank you for this OP. It lifted my spirits starting my day.

[dhol82]

6. Sounds like there was a previous pagan nature goddess that existed in the area.

Just brought into the Catholic Church with a changed name to appease the people.

[niyad]

8. see post 5.

[Act_of_Reparation]

9. Old god sucks?

Make up a new one.

Pretty telling.