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Extra.ie
22-05-2025
- General
- Extra.ie
Gen Z are more receptive to religion and spirituality than millennials
The public is divided in their attitudes towards the Catholic Church, but young adults are more approving of religion than the generation before them, a new poll has revealed. The Iona Institute survey found that 18-to-24-year-olds ('Gen Z') are somewhat more favourable towards religion and spirituality than those aged 25-35 ('millennials'). Some 17% of 18-to-24-year-olds say they are religious compared with just 5% of millennials, while 54% from Gen Z say they are religious and/or spiritual compared with 46% of millennials. Pic: Getty Images After Gen Z, the cohort identifying most strongly as religious was the 65-plus group at 16%. In addition, members of Gen Z are more likely to read spiritual or religious books, watch spiritual or religious content and follow individuals on social media who discuss spirituality and religion than 25-to-34-year-olds. The CEO of the Iona Institute, David Quinn, told he believes that young people's interest in religion is part of a search for purpose. Christian, Catholic, Chapel, Prayer Service. Pic: Getty images 'It could be that secular society isn't really offering satisfying answers. A recent study found that Irish teens are among the least happy in Europe, so it could be a response to rising levels of social anxiety,' he said. 'In America, they are seeing what's been called a 'quiet revival' in church attendance among young people.' The poll also shows that the public has differing attitudes towards Christianity on the one hand and the Catholic Church on the other. Some lit up candles at a church. Pic: Getty Images Half of the respondents to the poll said they have a positive view of Christianity, with 20% saying they have a negative view, and the rest in between. Only 27% of people have a favourable view of the Catholic Church overall, with 40% saying they have an unfavourable view, although 45% agree that Catholic teachings are still of benefit. 'When people think of the Catholic Church, they think of hierarchy and the cover-ups, but when they think of Catholic teachings, they think of something different. It could take a while for approval in the Church to rise again,' Mr Quinn said. The poll found that 27% of people say they would be happy if the Catholic Church vanished from Irish society completely, with 51% disagreeing with that stance and 21% neutral. Unsurprisingly, regular Mass-goers have by far the most positive view of the Church, while those who do not consider themselves Catholic at all have the most negative. 'Cultural Catholics' – those who say they are Catholic but rarely attend Mass – are somewhere in between. The poll found that 22% of respondents do not describe themselves as Catholic, which is roughly in line with Census 2022.
Irish Independent
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Number of marriages dropped 4pc last year as religious and civil ceremonies nearing parity
A Central Statistics Office (CSO) release, which was published today, revealed that Catholic and civil ceremonies were nearly on parity in 2024. They were the two most popular forms of ceremony for opposite-sex marriages across the country, with 32.6pc happy couples having a Catholic ceremony and 32.5pc holding a civil ceremony. The ratio of Catholic and civil ceremonies has reduced since the year before, in 2023, when 35.4pc of ceremonies were Catholic, while 31.6pc were civil. Only 33 more Catholic than civil ceremonies took place last year, compared with 6,905 more a decade ago, in 2014, marking a significant change within a decade. David Quinn, a spokesperson for the Iona Institute, said the figures 'don't surprise him at all' and that 'it's all part of a long-term trend'. "There's a big fall-off in church attendance, but the whole trend towards having non-church weddings accelerated when hotels could do the receptions and the ceremony. 'When that happened, there was a big takeoff in these non-church wedding ceremonies. The hotel will send them along to one of these organisations that I'm broadly calling 'New Age', and they will conduct the ceremony.' He expects this trend to continue and that 'something similar [might] eventually happen for funerals as well'. 'We're secularising, obviously, but it's not just that. Because if it was purely secularising, then people wouldn't be having quasi-religious ceremonies in the hotels and all these various organisations that now conduct these wedding ceremonies do include religious or spiritual elements,' he added. A wedding celebrant and solemniser from Co Wicklow, Barbara Ryan, also said that more couples choose a civil ceremony because they 'want everything to be in one venue'. ADVERTISEMENT "They don't necessarily want their guests to have to travel around from a church to the venue. "A lot of venues now, that I work in, recently enough, have purpose-built ceremony spaces, which are quite beautiful and very instagrammable. "The couples I work with want personal ceremonies that are focused on them and their families. They want a relaxed, meaningful ceremony that is not too long. And if they have children, they really want them involved and to have the ceremony focused on them," she said. A statistician in the life events and demography division, Seán O'Connor, added: 'Looking back 10 years, the proportion of Roman Catholic ceremonies for opposite-sex weddings has fallen from 59.3pc to 32.6pc.' However, the CSO report also revealed the overall number of marriages in Ireland continued to fall in 2024, down by almost 4pc from 2023, and by 7.7pc from 2014. There were 20,348 marriages registered in Ireland last year, which included 668 same-sex marriages, down from 21,159 in 2023 and 23,173 in 2022. Meanwhile, the average age for grooms and brides continues to rise, as the average age for a bride stood at 35.9 years last year, increasing from 35.8 years the year before and 35.4 years in 2022. However, the average age of grooms remained unchanged at 37.7 years since 2023. For grooms, the average age rose from 26.9 years in 1974 to 27.3 years in 1984, before increasing to 37.7 years in 2024. A similar trend can be observed for the average age of brides, rising from 24.6 years in 1974 to 25.2 years in 1984, before growing to 35.9 years in 2024. For same-sex weddings in 2024, the average age for males was 40.7 years, while the average for females was 39.7 years. For females, it rose from 38 years in 2023, while it decreased for males from 40.8 years in the same year.
