Our Church: Saint Patrick's Day and episcopacy in the Church of Ireland

In many Church of Ireland parish churches, you will notice something about stained glass depictions of Saint Patrick. Saint Patrick, contrasting with much of his traditional iconography, is not wearing a mitre.  Nor is he wearing eucharistic vestments. His attire is simple, plain robes. He is identified as a bishop solely by the fact that he holds a pastoral staff.

Many of these stained glass windows date from around 1932, marking the 1,500th anniversary of Saint Patrick's arrival in Ireland.

It was a time of heightened tensions between the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. The triumphalist nature of the centenary celebrations of Catholic Emancipation in 1929 had led the Irish Times to note "too frequent suggestions" that the Church of Ireland represented "an alien creed, an alien culture and alien aspirations". 

In late 1931, the Roman Catholic primate, Cardinal Joseph MacRory, publicly declared that the Church of Ireland had not existed on the island before the Reformation, was not "the rightful representative of the early Irish Church", and denied that "the Protestant Church of whatever shade, is any part of the Church that Christ founded".

It was against this background that many of the stained glass depictions of Saint Patrick appeared in Church of Ireland parish churches. These depictions were a response to an attempt - driven as much by political nationalism as by ecclesial concerns - to deny the Church of Ireland's claim to antiquity, to having been part of this Island's story since the arrival of Saint Patrick. This claim to antiquity was central to the Church of Ireland's self-understanding. In the words of the Preamble and Declaration of 1870:

We, the archbishops and bishops of this the Ancient Catholic and Apostolic Church of Ireland, together with the representatives of the clergy and laity of the same ...

In what way did the stained glass windows of Saint Patrick of the 1930s point to this self-understanding?

They did so because they were suggestive of the Church of Ireland episcopate. Church of Ireland bishops did not wear mitres. Nor did they (or any Church of Ireland clergy) wear eucharistic vestments. Church of Ireland bishops were simply attired in chimere, rochet, and tippet. They did, however, carry the pastoral staff. This was the sign of their episcopal office.

And, of course, in the stained glass windows Saint Patrick - like the Church of Ireland Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin - does not wear the pallium, the sign of papal appointment. For, like Patrick, they are not appointed by the See of Rome. 

To see the depictions of Saint Patrick in these stained glass windows, in other words, was - and is - to see a bishop of the Church of Ireland. Such stained glass depictions were a declaration of the antiquity of the Church of Ireland, of its descent from Patrick, of its place on this Island from the age of Patrick's mission.

They are also a sign of how episcopacy has been exercised and understood in the Church of Ireland: pastoral in character, not sacerdotal; in councils shared with clergy and laity, not in prelatical fashion. The bishop's office has been chiefly symbolised not by the mitre but by the pastoral staff, as seen in the stained glass windows of Saint Patrick. In the words of the Form of Consecrating a Bishop:

Be to the flock of Christ a shepherd, not a wolf; feed them, devour them not. Hold up the weak, heal the sick, bind up the broken, bring again the outcasts, seek the lost ...

On this Saint Patrick's Day, these stained glass depictions of Saint Patrick in Church of Ireland parish churches should be a cause of gratitude. They embody the Irish Anglican self-understanding that we have a descent from Patrick. That 'our Church' - to invoke Scruton's term - has been part of the story of this Island from the time of Patrick. That the Reformation is to be understood in the words of Ussher:

Wee preach no new faith, but the same Catholique faith that ever hath beene preached: neyther was it any part of our meaning to begin a new Church in these latter dayes of the world, but to reforme the old.

These stained glass depictions of Patrick also bring us to understand that our bishops minister amongst us as Patrick did of old, "to preach the Gospel ... to strengthen and confirm your faith ... to baptise and to ordain clerics" (Confessio 37, 47, 51). What is more, over the centuries not a few of our bishops have been able to echo the words of Patrick, "patrem habui Calpornium diaconum filium quendam Potiti presbyteri".

That all Christians on this Island share in a descent from Patrick, we joyfully affirm. That the episcopate of our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters shares with our episcopate in historic succession from Patrick, we gladly acknowledge. And when we look on these windows, not least on this day, we rejoice in our own descent from Patrick and how our bishops minister as he did.

I am greatly in debt to God. He gave me such great grace, that through me, many people should be born again in God and brought to full life. Also that clerics should be ordained everywhere for this people who have lately come to believe, and who the Lord has taken from the ends of the earth (Confessio 38).

(The first stained glass window is from Belfast Cathedral, 1924. The second is from Saul Church, Downpatrick, 1933.)