Sir, - Patrick Comerford's "World View" (The Irish Times, July 18th) trots out the old fallacy that St Augustine and Canterbury are the cradles of English Christianity. Its roots run deeper than that - they are Celtic.
As for St Augustine (a Frenchman), his mission was a failure. He did not even manage to evangelise the whole of Kent, where he landed. His fellow missionaries, Paulinus and Mellitus, were driven out, as indeed was Augustine's own successor, Laurentius. It was by Irish monks that the ensuing relapse into paganism was successfully countered.
The inept St Augustine so antagonised the Welsh branch of the Celtic church that it severed permanently all connection with him, delaying, according to some scholars, the formation of an English church by centuries.
England owes far more to Ireland and Scotland than it ever did to Rome. - Yours, etc., Conor O'Kelly,
Cross Avenue,
Blackrock,
Co Dublin.