• Article Tools
• Print
• RSS

Today Is Code Green

by Brian Caulfield 

Before there were color-coded rubber wristbands, or lapel pins and ribbons showing solidarity on breast cancer and other worthy causes, there was the Wearing of the Green.

Look around you today and see how many of your family members, coworkers or people on the street are wearing a touch of green – a tie, a shirt, a jacket, a pin, a carnation or at least an Irish twinkle in the eye. It doesn’t matter what race or religion you are, today everybody is Irish and everybody loves the Irish, even if the Irish can’t always love each other (that’s another column!). There is something in the Irish step, the Irish gait, the Irish dance and music that attracts people from all walks of life to share a bit in the Irish way of living and looking at the world. And maybe also share a sip of Irish brew and blarney.

And by the way, Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

If you’re Irish, and even if you’re not, consider this your all-purpose, expert, eyewitness St. Patrick’s Day column.

 Here are my credentials for writing such a column:
• I was born in New York City, whose archdiocese has St. Patrick as its patron.
• I was baptized in St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, where the parade passes.
• My father first carried me on his shoulders to watch the Fifth Avenue parade when I was 2 years old.
• I marched in the parade myself as an adult.
• I met Capt. Jack McCarthy, for many years the TV voice of the parade, on Second Avenue a few times.
• I wrote my first poem in the fourth grade about St. Patrick’s Day, when you could still rhyme “day” with “gay” without controversy.
• I covered the St. Patrick’s Day Parade for years as a reporter for Catholic New York.
• My grandmother was born in Sligo and claimed to have seen “wee people” in the fields, though she never got a pot of gold. (More about her in a moment.)

St. Patrick’s Day gathers people in the same way the Irish writer James Joyce once said the Catholic Church attracts: “Here comes everybody.” On March 17, everybody’s Irish.

There are some Catholics who bemoan the secularization of St. Patrick’s Day, with its link to drinking and carrying on, but I am not among those naysayers. Certainly, I don’t condone the kind of behavior on this saint’s day that would land a man in – ahem! – the paddy wagon (named, some say, for the police vehicle that would carry away the inebriated, who were presumed to be Irish). But I think the mainstream St. Patrick’s Day activities are in the best tradition of the Church, bringing Catholicism into the public square and keeping the names of saints alive in the popular imagination. You can’t see green today without at least a fleeting thought of heaven and how to get there – and even the leprechauns on so many Hallmark cards give a hint of the mystery of life that can lead a man to God.

I think we can fairly say that St. Patrick still sanctifies this day, with its parade up Fifth Avenue, past the grand cathedral, where the archbishop presides. Holy Mass is the focal point for many thousands in New York, and a Gaelic Mass is offered in some parishes. Try to count how many religious medals you see on TV today, worn by lads and lasses from the city’s many Catholic schools, and don’t forget the Holy Name Society banners of police and firefighters who march proudly under the name of their religion. As my grandmother would say, “More Catholic than the pope, they think they are!”

Yes, God rest my grandmother’s sweet soul, such a good woman she was. In her story lies the history of so many. She came to this country as a girl in the early 1900s, after the great wave of Irish immigration, and found work as a cleaning lady for the better Protestant families. You could always trust an Irish girl, they said, because she had to answer to the priest in confession if she stole anything. My grandmother met dear and dashing Mr. Caulfield, a proprietor of a Second Avenue bar, and they had seven children, all except the last one delivered at home. She had no use for doctors if a good dose of Castor oil and an egg plaster could do the trick.

Yes, my grandmother worked hard, and hard work knew her well. And she raised all her children with a firm hand within the Catholic Church. After she moved upstate, I spent summers with her when I was young and remember her lilting brogue that made every word sound like poetry and her cheerful manner that chased away whatever sadness came. I sat on her lap reading “Rosy, the Red Pony” as she napped, and then before bed, knelt with her to pray the rosary before an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. At her funeral, I knelt by her casket and vowed to return to the practice of my faith, recalling her poetry and the rosary.

On this day, I offer a tribute to one of St. Patrick’s spiritual daughters, who laughed at life’s hardships and passed on the faith even as she passed on. Éirinn go Brách. May we have many more like her to keep the faith alive.

---

(The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Headline Bistro or the Knights of Columbus.)