Religion in the Republic of Ireland

The primary religion in the Republic of Ireland is Roman Catholicism. Historically, prior to the arrival of Christianity, Celtic polytheism was the dominant religion of the nation.

Demographic Data

2006 Census

The 2006 census showed the following results:

A pie chart showing the proportion of followers of each religion (and none) in Ireland in 2006.

Eurobarometer Poll 2005

According to the most recent Eurobarometer Poll 2005,^[1]

• 73% of Irish citizens responded that "they believe there is a God".
• 22% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force".
• 4% answered that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force".

The following is a list of articles on Religion in the Republic of Ireland. It should be noted that most churches are organised on an all-Ireland basis which includes both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Anti-Protestantism in Ireland

In other cases, especially Northern Ireland or pre-Catholic Emancipation Ireland, the issue is more complex and has more to do with communal or nationalist sentiments than theological issues. During the Tudor re-conquest of Ireland by the Protestant state of England in the course of the 16th century, the Elizabethan state failed to convert the Catholic natives to Protestantism and there was also a vigorous campaign of proselytizing by Counter Reformation Catholic clergy. The result was that Catholicism came to be identified with sense of nativism and Protestantism came to be identified with the State.

The Penal Laws, first introduced in the early 17th century, were initially designed to force the native elite to conform to the state church by excluding non-Conformists and Roman Catholics from public office, but were later, starting under Queen Elizabeth, also used to confiscate virtually all Catholic owned land and grant it to Protestant settlers from England and Sotland. The Penal Laws had a lasting effect on the population, due to their severity (celebrating Catholicism in any form was punishable by death or enslavement under the laws), and the favouritism granted Irish Anglicans served to polarise the community in terms of religion. Anti-Protestantism in Early Modern Ireland 1536-1691 thus was also largely a form of hostility to the colonisation of Ireland. Irish poetry of this era shows a marked antipathy to Protestantism, one such poem reading, "The faith of Christ [Catholicism] with the faith of Luther is like ashes in the snow". The mixture of resistance to colonization and religious disagreements led to widespread massacres of Protestant settlers in the Irish Rebellion of 1641. Subsequent religious or sectarian antipathy was fueled by the atrocities committed by both sides in the Irish Confederate Wars, especially the repression of Catholicism during and after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, when Irish Catholic land was confiscated en masse, clergy were executed and discriminatory legislation was passed against Catholics.

The Penal Laws against Catholics (and also Presbyterians) were renewed in the late 17th and early 18th centuries due to fear of Catholic support for Jacobitism after the Williamite war in Ireland and were slowly repealed in 1771-1829. Penal Laws against Presbyterians were relaxed by the Toleration Act of 1719, due to their siding with the Jacobites in a 1715 rebellion. At the time the Penal Laws were in effect, Presbyterians and other non-Conformist Protestants left Ireland and settled in other countries. Some 250,000 left for the New World alone between the years 1717 and 1774, most of them arriving there from Ulster.

Sectarian conflict was continued in the late 18th century in the form of communal violence between rival Catholic and Protestant factions over land and trading rights (see Defenders (Ireland), Peep O'Day Boys and Orange Institution). The 1820s and 1830s in Ireland saw a major attempt by Protestant evangelists to convert Catholics, a campaign which caused great resentment among Catholics.

In modern Irish nationalism, anti-Protestantism is usually more nationalist than religious in tone. The main reason for this is the identification of Protestants with unionism - i.e. the support for the maintenance of the union with the United Kingdom, and opposition to Home Rule or Irish independence. In Northern Ireland, since the foundation of the Free State in 1921, Catholics, who are mainly nationalists, allege systematic discrimination against them by the Protestant unionist community. The mixture of religious and national identities on both sides reinforces both anti-Catholic and anti-Protestant sectarian prejudice in the province.

More specifically religious anti-Protestantism in Ireland was evidenced by the acceptance of the Ne Temere decrees in the early 20th century, whereby the Catholic Church decreed that all children born into mixed Catholic-Protestant marriages had to be brought up as Catholics. Protestants in Northern Ireland had long held that their religious liberty would be threatened under a 32-county Republic of Ireland, due to that country's Constitutional support of a "special place" in government for the Roman Catholic Church. This was amended in the Republic of Ireland in 1970 however.

The reasons for the dismissal of Mayo librarian Letitia Dunbar-Harrison are sometimes claimed to have been due to anti-Protestant prejudice, but others claim that her qualifications were the main reason and others claim a power struggle between the government in Dublin and local Mayo politics.

Protestant decline in the Republic of Ireland

Concentration of Protestants in Ireland per county.

In 1991, the population of the Republic of Ireland was approximately 3% Protestant, but the figure was over 10% in 1891, indicating a fall of 70% in the relative Protestant population over the past century.

The effect of Protestant depopulation in the Republic of Ireland is dramatic. In 1861 only the west coast and Kilkenny had less than 6% Protestant. Dublin and 2 of the border counties had over 20% Protestant. In 1991, however, all but 4 counties have less than 6% Protestant, the rest having less than 1%. There are no counties in the Republic of Ireland which have experienced a rise in the relative Protestant population over the period 1861 to 1991. Often, the counties which have managed to retain the highest proportion of Protestants are the ones which started off with a large proportion. In Northern Ireland, only counties Londonderry, Tyrone and Armagh have experienced a significant loss of relative Protestant population - and in these cases the change is not as dramatic as in the Republic.

See also

General

• Abbeys and priories in the Republic of Ireland
• Ardbraccan
• Book of Kells
• Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin
• St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin
• Primate of Ireland (Archbishop of Dublin)
• Glasnevin Cemetery
• Our Lady of Knock
• St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral
• St. Nicholas' Collegiate Church
• St. Patrick's Classical School (Navan)

Saints

• St Brendan
• St Brigid
• St Columba
• St Columbanus
• St Finnian of Moville
• St Patrick
• Margaret Ball
• Blessed Charles

See also

A Mosque in Dublin.

Articles:

• Association of Baptist Churches in Ireland
• Church of Ireland
• Atheist Ireland
• Hinduism in Ireland
• Neo-paganism in Ireland
• History of the Jews in Ireland
• Islam in Ireland
• List of Cathedrals in Ireland
• List of Church of Ireland dioceses
• List of the Roman Catholic dioceses of Ireland
• Methodist Church in Ireland
• Eastern Orthodoxy in the Republic of Ireland
• Presbyterian Church in Ireland
• Primate of All Ireland (Archbishop of Armagh)
• Quakers Ireland Yearly Meeting
• Religion in Northern Ireland
• Roman Catholicism in Ireland
• Humanist Association of Ireland
• History of Christianity in Ireland

Categories

• Category:Religion in the Republic of Ireland by county

References