Will the real St. Patrick stand up?

If you ask people who Saint Patrick was, you're likely to hear that he was an Irishman who chased the snakes out of Ireland. It may surprise you to learn that the real Saint Patrick was not actually Irish—

... yet his robust faith changed the Emerald Isle forever. He was born to a British middle class family around A.D.390. When he was a teenager he was kidnapped by Irish raiders who attacked his home and took him back to their King where he was enslaved as the King's shepherd. T. M. Moore writes: I sometimes wonder what the patron saint whom we remember each March 17 would think about the activities by means of which people commemorate his name. What would he make of the revelries, green beer, parades, sales, and the ubiquitous images of shamrocks and leprechauns?

Actually, I have no doubt he would condemn the whole kit-and-caboodle as irreverent and shocking. He who referred to himself as "a sinner, a most uncultivated man, and the least of all the faithful" would object to the very idea of a commemoration. His desire was to be utterly forgotten, to die a martyr and have his unburied body torn apart by beasts and birds, "so that after my death I may leave a legacy to so many thousands of my people—my brothers and sons whom I have baptized in the Lord." Says Moore, Patrick did not teach the Trinity to the Irish using the shamrock. He did not drive the snakes out of Ireland and probably did not best the Druids of the High King at Tara either. He was captured and enslaved more than once in his life time. Twice what is described as divine Revelation from God helped him to escape his captors. After his second escape he returned home to his overjoyed parents only to leave them due to a vision he received, of his Irish captors calling him their, "holy servant boy," to come and "shepherd" them. We know this because his own writings exist to this day. Including his letter to Coroticus in which he wrote some stinging rebuke against him and his soldiers for their treacherous acts against some new converts. Happy St. Patrick's Day DJ.