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Matthew A. C. Newsome, FSA Scot member of the Guild of Tartan Scholars
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HIGHLAND_DRESS What is the "Official" Word on Tartans? Did the Belted Plaid Have a Drawstring?
OTHER SCOTTISH The Scots-Irish Migration to Western NC Scottish Medieval Performing Class
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What Was the Celtic Church? This will be the second brief article I have put on this site dealing with religion in ancient Scotland (see the article on the Lost Tribes of Isreal). Why? Well, it would seem that there is just as much (if not more) misinformation floating around out there about the history of religion in Scotland as there has been about the history of tartan. And I keep having people ask me some of the same questions, so I might as well address them. Recently someone emailed me disputing a point that I made at the beginning of my article on the migration of the Scots-Irish to western North Carolina. Specifically, they disputed my claim that Scotland, after being Christianized beginning in the fifth century, was part of the Catholic Church until the Protestant Reformation in the 1500's. Didn't I know about the Celtic Church? they wondered. The Celtic Church, they claimed, had nothing to do with Catholicism and Scotland didn't become Roman Catholic until much later, beginning with the Synod of Whitby and really becoming Catholic under the reign of St. Margaret. I have had different people, at different times, put forth the claim that the Celtic Church was completely different from the Catholic Church. They see "Celtic Christianity" as Scotland's original Christian faith (and Ireland's for that matter) and the Catholic Church as something foreign imposed upon it at a later time. One problem, though, is that no one seems to agree on what the Celtic Church was. All they can agree on is what is was not. Depending on who is putting forth the argument, the Celtic Church was either some primitive form of Presbyterianism, or non-denominational Protestantism, or Eastern Orthodox, or a New Age blend of Christianity and Druidical paganism. Like I said, it all depends on the point of view of the person making the argument. Everyone wants to remake Celtic Christianity in their own image (much like all revisionists histories). But the truth is the one thing that no one wants to admit -- the Celtic Church was Catholic. But it was not Roman Catholic. Come again? What does that mean? Most non-Catholics view the Catholic Church as this great monolithic institution, and are completely unaware that different Rites exist within the Catholic Church. For instance, in the east, there are Byzantine Rite Catholics. Members of the Byzantine Church have a different liturgy and different disciplinary rules than do Roman Catholics, but they are still very much Catholic -- in union with the Pope in Rome and all that. One could technically call them "Roman Catholics" in the sense that they do have this unity with Rome, but in common parlance one would not use that phrase -- because of the differences in their rites and liturgies. But the faith -- their doctrines -- are the same. There are other Rites in the eastern parts of the Church. Besides Byzantine, there is the Coptic Rite, Chaldean Rite, Maronite Rite, etc. These are all very much different from the Roman Catholic Church as people in the West know it, but are Catholic nonetheless. One of the reasons we remain so ignorant of other Rites is that in the western part of the Church, the Latin Rite, also called the Roman Rite, long ago became dominant, to the point of eliminating other Rites. Catholics in the West are all Roman Rite Catholics, and so people in the West tend to equate all Catholics with Roman Catholics. But this simply is not the case now, nor was it the case historically in the West. In the West, there also was once a plurality of Rites in the Church (though never as much as in the East), and one of the other Rites was the Celtic Rite. We do not know very much about it, and there seems to have actually been at times a number of different Rites practiced in Great Britain, Ireland, Brittany, and other Celtic places that later historians would classify together under the term "Celtic Rite." But what we do know, from their own documents and liturgies that survive, is that this Celtic Church was simply another Rite of the western Catholic Church and not in any way, shape, or form a separate and competing version of Christianity. Yes, the Roman Rite later came to be dominant in places like Scotland and Ireland. But it was a case of one way of practicing Catholicism taking precedence over another, not Catholicism itself displacing a non-denominational Christianity, or Eastern Orthodoxy, or New Age Christian-paganism, or any of the other modern theories as to what "Celtic Christianity" is. You'll find a lot of misinformation on the internet if you Google "Celtic Church." But perhaps the most reliable and informative source, when it comes to actual historical information, is from this article in the Catholic Encyclopedia. |
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Last updated 11/23/07 email eogan@albanach.org Certain art used on this site from Ars Priscus
This is the private web site of Matthew Newsome and does not represent the opinions or positions of any other group or individual in any way, shape or form. |
