‘It’s almost like you’re shunned if you go to Mass’: Ireland’s dwindling young Catholics
Gleeson Brendan Saviour's St Church, áine At Domincan Limerick Picture: Blackwell City
For the first few years of Áine Blackwell’s time in secondary school, she had a secret — she was a practising Catholic.
She and her siblings were a rarity in that they prayed, went to Mass, and genuinely had a deep relationship with their faith, sometimes resulting in her feeling like an outsider.
Ms Blackwell, from Askeaton in Limerick, felt the need to hide the fact that she prayed, and was “very reserved” about her faith.
After meeting other young Catholics outside of school through prayer groups and seeing that she was not alone, Ms Blackwell said she was no longer afraid to show her faith.
Whether that was by passionately debating in religion class or telling her friends that she would pray for them in their times of struggle, Ms Blackwell came to a place where she no longer cared about what people thought.
However, that came with its own set of struggles.
“It was hard, there were times when you’d be mocked for your faith or people would look at you like some weirdo for praying the rosary like ‘why would you do that?’
“At that age, when you’re a teenager, people look for any way to derive some sort of entertainment from one another and so that did end up being a source of mockery.
“When I started taking my faith seriously, I realised all of those things don’t really matter because, at the end of the day, your faith is your most important gift,” she said.
She said her siblings had similar experiences, with her brother in particular, who is now training as a priest, being bullied “very badly”.
Now 23, Ms Blackwell is a missionary working alongside and meeting young Catholics from across the country and abroad.
She hosts prayer groups and retreats for young Catholics in Ireland.
Going to Mass has become the most important part of her day, and is often the first thing she does each morning.
Ms Blackwell said her faith was particularly important to her in secondary school, helping her through harder times while also giving her a purpose.
“My faith just gives me meaning to my life because I think that's the problem with a lot of people, they're just searching for meaning in so many different ways,” she said before adding: “My life isn’t just about me, and my faith really is the centre of my life, it’s where all of my decisions and everything comes from.”
Ms Blackwell said her faith provides peace, joy, comfort, and focus, which she can turn to during difficult times.
“Growing up, my family would have gone to Mass every Sunday and prayed the rosary together, stuff like that, but it wasn’t until I started meeting other young people in the faith when I was about 15 that I realised it wasn’t just my family,” she said.
Through Catholic youth clubs like Youth2000, Ms Blackwell met like-minded people from across the country, ones who celebrate their faith.
“It was through that, that I was like, OK, this isn’t just for our grandparents and stuff like that, that young people can actually practise their faith.
“I realised that it’s not just about ticking the box or going to Mass on Sunday just for the sake of it,” she said.
In 2016, she drove across 13 countries to get to Krakow, Poland, for World Youth Day, an international event for young Catholics originally started by Pope John Paul II in 1986.
She was one of 3m young Catholics to go.
“It was an amazing experience and I came to know how universal the church really was and how young people from all corners of the world were into their faith,” she said.
Perhaps her most formative time was during the two years she spent at Holy Family Mission in Tipperary, a residential Catholic community and formation house for young people aged 18 to 30 which aims to teach young Catholics about their faith.
She said she was surrounded by people her age who supported and encouraged her, something she said is not the case for many young people “from friends or even family”.
“When I found those friends that were so supportive, it was a moment where I knew that God had answered my prayers because that was something I really struggled with, not having people that respected my faith or encouraged me in it,” she said.
There was a 187% increase in the number of people stating they had no religion in Census 2022 compared with 2011 while people aged 25 to 29 in particular are less likely to be Roman Catholic (53%) than other age groups.
This was also the age cohort with the highest proportion of people with no religion (26%).
Despite dwindling numbers of young Catholics in Ireland, Ms Blackwell said there are countless ways to connect with young Catholics.
For example, she said she was going to an event in December which would see hundreds in attendance adding that she believes many people don’t realise that there are many young practising Catholics, ones who are “vibrant and joyful”.
“In society now, it’s almost like you’re shunned if you go to Mass, if you pray or if you even mention God, at least among my generation.
“What I find is that young people are actually hungry for this, they want to know more because I guess they’ve grown up not having gone to Mass, not having prayed, and they search for meaning in their lives in so many different ways and you are left empty at the end of it all,” she said.
She believes people her age are struggling to find real human connections, saying that many use social media as a replacement as well as a crutch to distract themselves from their problems.
“They just can’t be alone for more than a minute,” she said.
“There is a decline but not just young people, it’s everyone really,” said Limerick priest Chris O’Donnell who described declining numbers as a “stark reality” but cautioned that it was not just Catholicism but faith across the board.
“It’s symptomatic of being part of a culture that doesn’t encourage faith and maybe in some quarters, discourages it,” he said believing that a sense of depth, meaning, and purpose has been lost to the culture we find ourselves living in.
This culture, he believes, does not encourage individuals to live deeply, find meaning or belonging and results in filling voids with things that do not fulfil them resulting in discontentment.
“That’s fairly evident in how our society can come asunder at times and how people can come asunder,” he said on loudspeaker while driving across Limerick.
Fr O’Donnell believes we are currently living in the most disconnected era, despite having the greatest possibilities for connection and communication “ever known”.
“I’m not saying faith is a fix-all all but there is something whereby we’re not meeting what needs to be met in our soul, spirit or depth and I feel the ramifications are sometimes evident,” he said.
“In many ways, we’ll scroll through TikTok just to distract ourselves from the disease of being with ourselves or the disease of silence.
“I think it’s more reflective of a bigger issue that sadly I feel we may see more and more people feeling like they don’t belong and disconnected,” he said.
Fr O’Donnell works closely with young people, many of whom he said are afraid to admit that they go to Mass.
“There’s something in our culture that is not encouraging people to have a faith or to have depth and that would worry me about the future of our society,” he said.
“It’s kind of like God is missing but he’s not missed,” he said believing younger people are struggling to find meaning.
Fr O’Donnell said due to significant advances in science and technology, there was a general view that faith was a form of “old wives tales”, one not built on academic rigour which has “explained God away”.
“Which couldn’t be further from the truth because there’s as much rigour and discipline to theology as there is to science, it’s never been just wishful thinking or old wives tales,” he said.
Although scandals in the Catholic church have not helped, he said, faiths across the board are grappling with declining numbers due to a culture that discourages someone from being open about their faith.
Helen McSweeney from East Cork carried out research on the issue of discrimination against Catholics while studying psychology and social studies at Cork College of FET, formally known as Cork College of Commerce.
“I really expected the topic to be met with strong disagreement and criticism but, quite to the contrary, I was very taken aback by the strength of agreement, particularly by those aged over 50, that this discrimination is occurring,” she said.
As part of her research, she carried out a small survey of 23 people who identified as Catholic.
Some 73% of those said the church in Ireland is an easy target for excessive criticism with one participant saying: “As a lot of people are non-religious, it’s very easy to pass comments on other religions without any context or reasoning.”
On the discrimination of practising Catholics, one participant said: “I believe religion is a private affair and if you are not overly vocal about your beliefs you won’t be discriminated against.”
One participant noted that her son, a practising Catholic, “is ridiculed constantly by his ‘arty’ atheistic friends because he plays music for the church.”
Some 62% of participants believe the church discriminates against homosexuality, with almost three in ten (29%) believing it does not.
One participant said: “Heterosexual sex outside of marriage is also wrong. It is a cross for the homosexual to carry on and they may fail like the rest of us.”
Lastly, half of those surveyed believe the decline in those entering religious orders is due to discrimination with one participant saying that scandals and child abuse within the church have made it an “unattractive profession/vocation” for young people.
Perhaps even more rare than a young Catholic is a young priest.
Fr Ronan Sheehan from Newcestown was the youngest priest in Ireland for about 11 months when he was ordained at the age of 27.
Now 29, his crown was stolen from him and is the third youngest priest in Ireland.
“There’s an element of the humane and an element of the divine in a priestly call because the idea has to come from somewhere and I don’t know where exactly it came from,” he says at his presbytery in Ballincollig, Cork.
“It was an itch that I had to scratch and that’s why I applied for seminary when I was in Leaving Cert and I gave myself three years and I said 'if it’s not for me, it’s not for me',” he said.
Fr Sheehan had a very influential parish priest when he was growing up in Newcestown, Cork, one who was a familiar face and very involved in the local community.
“He was an influence on me but then at some point, the idea came into my own mind,” he said.
In contrast to Ms Blackwell’s school experience, Fr Ronan’s classmates were quite supportive and encouraging.
“Their line I suspect was a line most people would adopt being: ‘Well, it’s not for me but if it’s what you want to do and you’re happy then go with it’ but they’d be saying the same thing if I were to become an astronaut or a football player,” he said, laughing.
However, the move was not entirely unexpected among his peers, as he showed a growing interest in faith and religion while also rarely missing Mass, “which was atypical” for people his age.
Despite this, he never felt out of place among his friends at school, something which did happen however once he reached seminary rather than attending University College Cork like his friends.
“You’re up saying your prayers at 7am in the morning and at 10pm at night and lights out after that so it wasn’t the usual college experience,” he said.
Although wondering if he missed out when it comes to the college experience, he argued that “most college students survive on pasta while we were well looked after that way”.
He now serves three parishes including Ballincollig, Ovens, and Ballinora which he said is a “sign of the times” in that a decreasing number of priests means being spread between several areas.
He said although some people still feel some connection to the church, others have “stepped away altogether”.
“There’s a huge population in Ballincollig so you’re going to get families with primary or secondary school-age children but my own peers would probably very rarely go unless it was Christmas or if it was somebody’s anniversary,” he said.
“There are some who have stepped away and it doesn’t even cross their minds anymore. If they’re searching for meaning, they don’t look in the church anymore and there are people I’d love to engage with but it’s hard to meet them,” he said.
Although the low number of younger Catholics is a concern, he said attendance at Mass is just one metric.
“At a funeral, for example, you see a faith that’s alive. It might not be expressed by Sunday Mass but it’s still there,” he said.
However, he said his concern doesn’t lead him “to despair” but inspires him to seek other ways of reaching out to others.
For example, his parish just finished an Alpha Youth programme which saw 39 teenagers attend for nine weeks.
The programme introduces young people to the Christian faith.
“I was expecting 10 people,” he said adding: “There are glimmers of hope like that.”
It seems that the pressure is on priests to provide deeper and more important sermons to chew on, to make Mass more enjoyable for those who may find it “boring”, he said.
Perhaps even more of a concern is the declining number of priests, noting that the parish he grew up in as a child is now without a resident priest.
“They’re still taken care of, priests from surrounding parishes will come but they miss having their priest, that is morphing and changing and there’s a bit of a grieving process that goes with that,” he said.
He likened the decline of the rural priest to the decline of the rural GP and other vital rural services that seem to be dwindling.
“Crunch time is coming, we’re seeing it on the ground, especially in the country areas and if a priest gets sick or dies prematurely you’re stretching thinner and thinner and eventually, you just have to leave gaps,” he said.