The Irish believed that gods, druids, poets, and others in touch with the magical world could be literal shape-shifters

Is is seldom possible to say of the medievals that they *always* did one thing and *never* another; they were marvelously inconsistent.

Throughout our world the cry of the poor so often goes unheard. The prophets harangued Israel and Judah unceasingly about the powerless and marginalized, the overlooked widows, orphans, and "sojourners in our midst," who are still with us today as single mothers, hungry children, and helpless immigrants, wraiths invisible in our prosperous societies.

The Irish innovation was to make all confession a completely private affair between penitent and priest - and to make it as repeatable as necessary. (In fact, repetition was encouraged on the theory that, oh well, everyone pretty much sinned just about all the time.)

The Irish believed that gods, druids, poets, and others in touch with the magical world could be literal shape-shifters

In becoming an Irishman, Patrick wedded his world to theirs, his faith to their life…Patrick found a way of swimming down to the depths of the Irish psyche and warming and transforming Irish imagination – making it more humane and more noble while keeping it Irish.

(The festival) was awfully impersonal and abstract and there was something really gloomy about it. That's when I first started thinking about the typical view of reality.