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St. Patrick’s Day Miscellany, 3/17/25

St. Patrick’s Day Miscellany, 3/17/25

Last updated on: March 17, 2025 at 6:00 am by Gene Veith

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St. Patrick’s Day Miscellany, 3/17/25 2025-03-14T15:29:47-04:00 Gene Veith

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St. Patrick was a missionary, a bishop in the early church, and a slave. Our posts today link all three of these facets of the saint’s life to today. . . .

No cultural celebrations, except St. Patrick’s Day. The God Jesus Christ. And a human rights activist is convicted of slavery.

No Cultural Celebrations, Except St. Patrick’s Day

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has put the kibosh on the military taking part in “identity months,” such as these:

National African American/Black History Month, Women’s History Month, Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Pride Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and National American Indian Heritage Month.

Such observances, said Hegseth, are divisive: “Efforts to divide the force – to put one group ahead of another – erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.”

But Hegseth is allowing St. Patrick’s Day observances at military installations. And for that, he is taking a lot of flack. We can’t celebrate black identity, but we can celebrate Irish identity? “So it’s okay to celebrate St Patrick’s day which is based on a culture but not other cultures,” said a commenter on an Air Force social media page; “make it make sense.”

Well, the Irish don’t get a whole month. Besides, St. Patrick’s Day, strictly speaking, is a Christian holiday, which also raised the ire of some critics. A military spokesman tried to “make it make sense”:

Hegseth’s ban on cultural awareness months “does not prohibit participation in many holiday celebrations, outreach events and events recognizing historical figures,” Marcus Byrne, director of communication for the Army Medical Center of Excellence, located at Fort Sam Houston, said by email.

Still permitted, he said, are celebrations of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Valentine’s Day, Easter, St. Patrick’s Day and numerous other holidays, including Eid al Fitr, which marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

True. Pride Month and National Disability Employment Awareness Month are not “holidays.” Actually, there are self-styled “Heritage Months and Observances” for every month of the year. (OK, I see that March is Irish American Heritage Month, so they do get a month, but the military isn’t setting the whole month aside to honor the Irish. March is also the month for Greeks, Women’s History, and the Developmentally Disabled.)

The God Jesus Christ

Back in 2022, I blogged about the Meggido Mosaic. Here is part of what I said:

On the site of an Israeli prison in Megiddo (also known as Armageddon), archaeaologists have excavated a beautiful mosaic floor, which was evidently made for one of the earliest places of Christian worship we have discovered, with a date of 230 A.D. On it are inscribed the names of Romans, Greeks, and Jews, including a number of women, showing the mix of ethnicities and genders referred to in St. Paul’s epistles. And there is this inscription: ‘The god-loving Akeptous has offered the table to God Jesus Christ as a memorial.”

Akeptous’s confession of “God Jesus Christ” shows that 100 years before the Council of Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., Christians already believed in the deity of Christ.

A more recent discussion includes this detail: “Measuring about 16 by 32 feet, this extensive mosaic covered the floor of a Christian worship hall. Astonishingly, this hall formed a wing of a large residential building used by Roman soldiers, namely the Sixth Ironclad Legion stationed at the nearby military camp of Legio.”

Evidently, Roman soldiers were becoming Christians! This explains another curious detail. One of the inscriptions says that the person who paid for the mosaic was “our brother,” a Roman centurion: “Gaianus, also called Porphyrius, centurion, our brother, has made the mosaic at his own expense as an act of generosity.”

The mosaic is currently on exhibit at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., where it will be until July 6.

There is now a documentary about it from Angel Studios, the original producers of The Chosen and Sound of Freedom. Here is the trailer:

Human Rights Activist Convicted of Slavery

Lydia Mugambe is a judge for the United Nations and a fellow at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights. A British court convicted her for slavery.

An attorney from Uganda, Mugambe was in the UK working on a doctorate from Oxford when she promised a young woman from her country a job with the embassy staff. When the woman arrived in England, Mugambe took away her passport and made her work without pay as a maid and nanny.

From the AP story:

Prosecution lawyer Caroline Haughey told jurors during the trial that Mugambe “exploited and abused” the victim, deceiving her into coming to the U.K. and taking advantage of her lack of understanding of her rights. . . .

“Lydia Mugambe used her position to exploit a vulnerable young woman, controlling her freedom and making her work without payment,” said Eran Cutliffe of the Crown Prosecution Service’s Special Crime Division. “Thanks to the victim’s courage in coming forward it has been possible to bring Ms. Mugambe to justice and be held accountable for her actions.”

She is still listed on the website of Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, which says this about her:

Lydia Mugambe is a lawyer from Uganda who was appointed in July 2013 as a Judge of the High Court in Uganda. Prior to this appointment, Lydia worked from 2005 to 2013 at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (UNICTR), first as a Legal Officer in Chambers and later as an Appeals Counsel under the Appeals Division in the Office of the Prosecutor. In addition, Mugambe was a participant in the Global Raphael Lemkin Seminar for Genocide Prevention, hosted by the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation As an AHDA fellow, Mugambe will develop a project around women in northern Uganda who have suffered severe human rights abuses, including rape, during the over 10-year civil war affecting their community. Lydia is an Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (AIPR) Fellow.

Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth

holidays vs. observances

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