St. Patrick's - day of faith or festival?

CHIEFTAIN PHOTO/JOHN JAQUES The Rev. William Liam Courtney of St. Therese Catholic Church talks about his Irish heritage.

Irish priests says Irish holiday is a holy day.

By GAYLE PEREZ
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

Many people will celebrate St. Patrick's Day today with a toast of green beer, some corned beef and cabbage and wearing of the green.

The Rev. Liam Courtney chooses to celebrate the holiday in traditional Irish fashion.

"I will celebrate it with the Mass. That's the most important thing," said Courtney, a native of Ireland and a local Catholic priest.

"In Ireland this is really a holy day. The focus of the celebration is on the faith that St. Patrick brought to Ireland," Courtney added, his words accented with a thick Irish brogue.

Growing up on a farm near Drumlish village in the northern midlands of Ireland, Courtney said St. Patrick's Day was a simple but holy celebration of the patron saint of Ireland.

"We would pin a shamrock onto our lapel and go to Mass," said the 66-year-old pastor of the Shrine of St. Therese Church. "The shamrock represents the symbol of our faith. St. Patrick used the shamrock to share the faith by teaching about the Holy Trinity - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit."

Occasionally, Courtney, who has been a priest since 1999, said his family of seven brothers and a sister would celebrate the day with a "few extras."

"Some times we would have a family meal, but it was not corned beef," he said laughingly. "I never had corned beef in Ireland. Our meal was more like ham and fresh spring cabbage."

His mother also would prepare several traditional Irish dishes such as boxty (a potato pancake) and Irish breads.

The village of Drumlish also occasionally would have some special activities in honor of St. Patrick's Day, Courtney said.

"There might be some hurling, or Gaelic football, and traditional music and dancing," he said.

"But the main focus was always on the bringing of the faith to Ireland. We focused on how one man was capable of converting a whole bunch of people in a short period of time."

Parades, wearing of the green, leprechauns and drinking green beer all are part of the American celebration of St. Patrick's Day, Courtney said.

"I actually have never seen green beer in Ireland. That is an American custom," he said. "I've always said St. Patrick's Day is wild in the United States."

Today, there are parades on St. Patrick's Day in cities throughout the U.S.

Courtney said the American influence has begun to seep into the celebrations in Ireland. He said Irish-Americans have returned to Ireland to celebrate the day and brought with them the American traditions.

"In recent years they've started to have parades in nearly every province and big towns in Ireland," he said.

Courtney said he's beginning to see the focus shift from the religious holiday to more of a day to celebrate the Irish heritage.

"The introduction of some of these other activities has tended to take away from the religious celebrations. It is now seen as a national holiday to celebrate nationality rather than faith."

Courtney, who has lived off and on in the U.S. for nearly 46 years, said he has participated in the American celebration of St. Patrick's Day but not without first celebrating the Irish way.

"My brother was living in Jersey City and we were going to go to New York to watch the parade," he said. "But before we left for the parade, we put on our shamrocks and went to Mass in Jersey City, and then went and stood for seven hours at 61st Street and Seventh Avenue to watch the parade."

Courtney said he's saddened to see the true meaning of St. Patrick's Day give way to today's emphasis of parties and drinking.

"The drinking beer and slopping around, I don't like that part of it," he said. "The religious holidays have been robbed of their meaning and that's regrettable."

"The depth of the celebration is really about sending the faith to others to teach them about God and his love, mercy and compassion," he added. "Once it loses that focus then the holiday has lost its meaning and the shamrock will be reduced to nothing more than another plant growing on the Irish countryside."

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