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The Catholic Church in Ireland, or Irish Catholic Church, is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in communion with the Holy See. With 3.5 million members (in the Republic of Ireland), it is the largest Christian church in Ireland. In the Republic of Ireland's 2022 census, 69% of the population identified as Roman Catholic. [2]
Irish Catholics (Irish: Caitlicigh na hÉireann) are an ethnoreligious group native to Ireland [12] [13] whose members are both Catholic and Irish. They have a large diaspora , which includes over 31 million American citizens , [ 14 ] plus over 7 million Irish Australians , of whom around 67% adhere to Catholicism.
The new viceroy, Lord Camden, was instructed to conciliate the Catholic bishops by setting up a Catholic college for the training of Irish priests; this was done by the establishment of Maynooth College. But he was to set his face against all parliamentary reform and all Catholic concessions. These things he did with a will.
"The crisis is now mathematically certain. If we keep going the way we are, the future of the Irish priesthood is now unsustainable," noted Brendan Hoban, head of the Association of Catholic priests. [16] In 2017 Fr Sean McDonagh wrote an article in the Tablet saying "Over 65 per cent of Irish priests are aged 55 or over.
Since 1970, the number of Catholic priests in the world has decreased by about 5,000, to 414,313 priests as of 2012. [16] but the worldwide Catholic population has nearly doubled, growing from 653.6 million in 1970 to 1.229 billion in 2012. [16] This has resulted in a worldwide shortage of Catholic priests.
The Catholic Church in Ireland serves Catholics in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland under the spiritual leadership of Pope Francis and the Conference of Irish Bishops. In the Republic of Ireland, 87.4% of the citizens were baptised Catholic as infants while the figure for Northern Ireland is 43.8%.
But while Catholics tend to vote for Irish nationalist parties and support the cause of a united Ireland, an increase in Catholic population does not automatically increase support for either.
Among Roman Catholics, a 2010 Bishops Conference survey found that 10.1% of Irish Catholics did not believe in God. [ 22 ] According to a 2012 WIN-Gallup International poll, Ireland had the second highest decline in religiosity from 69% in 2005 to 47% in 2012, while those who considered themselves not a religious person increased 25% in 2005 to ...