Last week The Iona Institute published a widely covered briefing note called ‘Baptism Trends in Ireland’. What grabbed the headlines was the dramatic finding that the number of Catholic baptisms has fallen by 30pc in the last ten years. But when you think about it, is the figure so surprising? Over the same period, births have fallen by almost 20pc and the country has become more secular. If we had tracked baptism figures for other Churches, we would probably have found a very similar drop.
Our paper put the split between the two causes of falling baptisms, namely the decline in births combined with rising secularism at roughly 60/40.
If we were to repeat this exercise in another ten years, it’s likely we will record a similar drop. Our briefing note looked mainly at Census data from 2016 and 2022. We noted that the number of children aged 0-4 who were marked down as Catholic fell in those years from 78.3pc to 65.4pc of the total, while the number marked down as having no religion rose from 9.2pc to 15.6pc.
By the time Census 2027 comes out we will probably see a further big increase in the number of children (and their mothers) in the ‘no religion’ category.
But we will also see a decrease in the number of 0-4-year-olds, full stop. Between Census 2016 and Census 2022, the number in this age group fell by 37,215 from 330,012 to 292,797.
In fact, new population statistics from the CSO published today show the number is down a further 2,700. The drop would certainly be more were it not for high immigration. The effect on Ireland of high immigration is another story.
As you would expect, the fall in baptisms varies by diocese. Whereas they fell by 30pc across the whole island, they dropped by 40pc in Dublin archdiocese, but actually rose by 0.9pc in Elphin diocese, which covers mainly Sligo and Roscommon. The average fall was in the 20pc-30pc range.
Something else to be noted is that almost all mothers in the age group 25-39 who identified as Catholic in Census 2022 appear to have had their children baptised. Just under 68pc of this age group of mothers said they were Catholic, and 65.4pc of children aged 0-4 were marked down as Catholic, which is an almost one-for-one match.
Obviously only a minority of those mothers would be regular Mass-goers, meaning that most of them fall into the ‘cultural’ or ‘a la carte’ Catholic mould.
As we say in the paper, a lot of these Catholics would have had their wedding ceremonies in hotels, but then later had their children baptised, followed by receiving First Holy Communion and Confirmation. People are contradictory and don’t fall into easy categories.
This probably frustrates both The Iona Institute and Atheist Ireland. Why can’t people who say they’re Christian tick all Christian practice boxes, and why do people, who are mostly secular in many ways, still go in for the sacraments and identify as Catholic, or Christian, as the case may be?
Going forward, my guess is that cultural Catholicism in Ireland will remain quite strong in its own peculiar way, at least for another couple of decades. A lot of parents who don’t practice will continue to have their children baptised and receive over sacraments. We can surmise this because around 40,000 children are still baptised into the Catholic Church in Britain each year. Britain has a roughly similar-sized Catholic population to the island of Ireland, but low levels of practice. So cultural Catholicism remains fairly strong in Britain.
But if you are secular, does the 30pc fall in baptisms in the last decade mean you should break out the bubbly? I don’t think so because, as mentioned, the main factor dragging down the figure is the falling birth rate and an ageing population.
Those new CSO population figures show that the number of children under one in the Republic has fallen from 75,000 in 2010, to 55,000 in 2026. That is quite a drop, and with a fertility rate of just 1.5 the only way is down unless even more immigrants arrive and those immigrants have lots of children.
But because many of those immigrants are coming from countries like Brazil and India, it seems unlikely they will because the fertility rate in Brazil is now far below replacement level at around 1.63, and India’s has fallen a bit below at 1.9. But it has dropped to around 1.5 among middle class Indians, which is mainly what we are getting here.
The falling birth rate has multiple causes but one of them is growing secularism. Religious people still have more children than secular people. You would be hard pressed to find a country which has bucked this trend.
Some people might celebrate the fact that we don’t have as many babies on average as we once did, but once fertility rates far well below the replacement level of 2.1, then alarm bells ought to start ringing. Do we really want to live in a country with a lot more retired people than children, because that is where we’re headed, even with high immigration, according to CSO projections.
The fact is that the falling number of baptisms is a symptom of a society where, for various reasons, people are having far fewer children, full stop, and it’s hard to see how this is a cause for celebration, even for the most secular-minded.
David Quinn is CEO of The Iona Institute. (@davquinn @ionainstitute)
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