WobLog

This year, the Feast of St. Patrick on March 17 falls during Holy Week. Faithful Catholics will have to forgo the whooping it up with corned beef and green beer to maintain their focus on the central element of Holy Week: the Lord's Passion. The Dallas News has an article on the tension between this increasingly secular holiday and the Church's most important week:

Few days in the Christian calendar have such a split personality as March 17.

The luck of the Irish was with Clyde Watts on Thursday as he worked on a float at Lone Star Parade Floats for Saturday's festivities on Greenville Avenue. The day dedicated to the bishop who overthrew paganism in Ireland has long since become, for most Americans, an excuse to wear (or drink) something green. Even Christmas, commercialized though it is, isn't commonly commemorated with wet T-shirt contests.

"There is a tension there, the idea of celebrating it as a religious feast compared to a secular holiday," said John Norris, chairman of theology at the University of Dallas.

The conflict has been brought into sharper relief this year, when for the first time since 1940, St. Patrick's Day falls during Holy Week.

I gave up beer for Lent this year, so even if St. Paddy's Day had fallen outside of Holy Week, I'd have been out of luck. The only thing left to decide is whether I'm going to wear green on Monday or not. I'm thinking not, because the inevitable questions that come up will give me the opportunity to explain that this year the feast has been superseded by Holy Week.