Noted with hopes I'll really do it

Before March 17 of next year, I really want to set down an essay detailing where people have been getting the legend of St. Patrick and the conversion of Ireland wrong. The more I look at it, the more I realize that pagans have been buying into church-generated propaganda in their quest for a whipping boy. I have no love for evangelism per se. I also have no love for swallowing a fraud as if it were valid history. I'm a big fan of disliking what someone really did, not what people have been misled into believing happened.

My sources look to include Barry Raftery, modern writings on the history of Celtic Christianity, and a fascinating set of penitentials written by Irish monks in the 6th-8th centuries. I may pull in bits about Christian conversion efforts that make his look like leaving a Chick tract behind in a public restroom, just for the sake of perspective.

And just for the record, I was inspired by a History Channel attempt at discussing Celtic history that swallowed the same propaganda without the bloodshed that gets assigned to him. I also freely admit that the hatred spewed every March 17 in pagan circles has been getting to me more and more every year. It sometimes has hints of anti-Irish bigotry attached, only making matters worse from where I sit.