Clerical celibibacy didn't become enforced in any way that could be called "approximately effective" until the high middle ages, but there were pronouncements from the Bishop of Rome as early as the 4th century ordering some clergy to refrain from conjugal knowledge of their wives. One scholar has used the timing of these pronouncements to support his estimate of the date of Patricks birth !

For St. Patrick's memory to serve as a political football is very much in the Irish tradition. Patrick was an obscure local saint of Ard-Macha until the Easter controversy, whereupon as I understand the history, a deal (in effect, not necessarily in conscious intention)was struck: The north of Ireland would accept the south's procedure for computing Easter, and in exchange the Patrick's successors at Armagh would become the preeminant bishops of Ireland.

T.