Number of Catholic weddings in Ireland plummets by over half in 10 years

(LifeSiteNews) — The number of Catholic weddings in Ireland fell by over half from 2014 to 2024, reflecting an increasing preference for civil marriages as well as a decline in marriage overall.

Catholic weddings in the country fell by 51% over the decade-long period in a remarkable drop from 13,071 in 2014 to 6,425 in 2024, according to the Central Statistics Office. By 2024, civil marriages outnumbered Catholic marriages by a small margin at 6,743.

The number of total marriages in the country has also fallen by 7.7% over the same period, from 22,045 to 20,348.

Given that believing Catholics recognize marriage is a holy sacrament, the growing preference for civil ceremonies in place of Catholic weddings indicates a continued decline in Catholic belief and practice — at least recently — in a once-robustly Catholic country.

Like most of the Western world, Ireland has experienced a devastating loss of practicing Catholics, albeit later than most other countries. The country boasted 91% weekly Mass attendance among adult Catholics in 1972, and a Georgetown University study found that in 1980, Ireland’s Catholics had one of the highest rates of weekly Mass attendance in the world. 

Weekly Mass attendance had declined to 81 percent in 1990, a rate still outstandingly high for the time. However, the rate plummeted to 48 percent in 2006, according to the Irish Census, and attendance numbers have continued to decline. 

Polling company Amárach Research found in 2023 that 24 percent of survey respondents were “regular Mass goers” before the COVID-19 outbreak — not necessarily even weekly Mass goers — and 41 percent of these Catholics said they had not returned to Mass.

The deterioration of Catholic practice is also reflected in abysmally low numbers of seminarians in Ireland, which only decades ago flourished with priests and exported many of them to the U.S. No less than eight diocesan seminaries have closed in Ireland since 1993 due to the steady erosion of the Catholic faith and vocations across the island country.

In 2021, the country’s only diocesan seminary announced that only four men had joined priestly studies that year in what is believed to be the lowest number since the seminary’s foundation in 1795. 

The hemorrhaging of practicing Catholics in the country appears to be associated with a weakening of belief in core Catholic teachings. A 2012 survey conducted by the dissident Association of Catholic Priests found that 87 percent of respondents thought the Church should abolish mandatory priestly celibacy and 77 percent thought that women should be allowed to be ordained to the priesthood. About 60 percent “disagreed strongly” with the Church’s teaching on homosexuality and three quarters said that the Church’s teaching on sexuality is “not relevant” to them or their families.

There is, however, a glimmer of hope for religious revival in Ireland, especially among the youth. The country is one of many worldwide that recorded a significant uptick in adult Catholic converts in 2026, and a Eucharistic revival is taking place in the northern part of the country.

Bishop Niall Coll of Raphoe recently highlighted the fact that Catholic converts often “(a)re drawn to doctrinal solidity, sacramental depth and continuity with the Church’s tradition.” He added, “For them, the Church lies in truth that is intelligible in body and demanding, not adaptability.”

He stressed that “one of the most pressing challenges” for the Church is catechesis and catechist formation. “Renewal cannot be sustained without formation,” he noted.