It’s tragic that so many say that the Orthodox Church had not come to Ireland prior to the 1960s (when the new definition of Orthodox / world council of churches version, dominated by actual Bolshevist & Soviet installed bishops, when they had finally arrived in Ireland)!
However the Benedictine order is considered Orthodox, as predating the great schism, as well as many other orders of the original Culdee Celtic priests (all Orthodox). The Culdees Order at Glastonbury was called ‘Egyptian’ throughout the middle ages because of it’s eastern practices, the tor pyramids etc.
Not only Saint Patrick the Irish Primate of Armagh and his successors were closely interlocked with Glastonbury, but also Saint David of Wales who shared genealogies as documented in the Welsh Pedigrees of Saints. It’s well known that St David, in the 6th Century was the first to add on to Glastonbury, who was under the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who consecrated him. The rest of the Culdees were primarily holding to these documented Welsh & Irish roots which all trace in bloodlines and practices dating back to Joseph of Arimathea in Wales.
Also, as most of the Celtic Gallican church, (taking up all Celtic lands) maintained the Quartodeciman exclusive teachings Polycarp and Polycrates (another established Apostolic church maintaining it’s own independence & autonomy) as the church of Ephesus and Smyrna, which was excommunicated from Rome and never subordinate to any of the other established Orthodox Patriarchates.
The Western Roman Catholic church has also been forced to admit, so many times the validity of these early 4th-6th Century documents. In at least five church councils (Pisa 1409; Constance 1417; Sens 1418; Sienna 1424; and Basil 1434) it was substantiated that the British church is the oldest Church outside of the Bible lands; with the Council of Basil declaring in 1434, “The Churches of France and Spain must yield in points of antiquity and precedence to that of Britain, as the latter Church was founded by St. Joseph of Arimathea immediately after the passion of Christ.”
Black Friars at Armagh Ireland and the Primates of the church were ones who proved their independence in the long continued practices of married Abbots and bishops. These passed down priestly offices via coarbs (actual lineal heirs) listed in long successions of their Irish Sees, passing down not only these co-substantiated Levitical lines of Ireland but of the Welsh Saints, as one family. Contrary to Rome’s forbidding priests to marry, these marriages prove the dominant East Orthodox nature of the Irish and Celtic church.
Many books on this all have been written.
Some articles:
https://celticorthodoxy.com/2022/05/on-ireland-and-the-celtic-church-by-george-t-stokes-d-d-m-r-i-a-university-of-dublin
https://celticorthodoxy.com/2017/05/short-history-orthodox-church-of-the-culdees
https://celticorthodoxy.com/2017/05/glastonbury-married-cleric-monks
The Culdees of Iona and other Scottish Monasteries were all Irish schools… they trained the original English Saxon Orthodox, who they themselves were long-established resisters of Rome, although Orthodox and rooted in the Gothic Eastern schools. This non-conformist Orthodoxy of the West was set ablaze by the Celts who later built up Anglo Saxon (or British) church, preserved our Orthodox liturgies in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer today etc. The German Saxon Lutheranism was only a bi-product of this strong spirit of the continued Orthodox resistance practice of the Saxon & Gothic people. It was a wise exploitation of the Celts to take it all to the next level with the Saxon and later Danish Norman French governments. Our forefathers have showed us the paths. As we restore the light of orthodoxy, the cockroaches and vermin will all run, and will be consumed, not able to hide in a true Christian awakened atmosphere.