A NEW paper from The Iona Institute shows that last year a quarter of all weddings that took place in Ireland were broadly ‘New Age’ in character, while Christian ceremonies accounted for not much more than a third of the total. The paper, by columnist Breda O’Brien, says that the Churches must respond to this challenge and see if they can find ways to draw more people back to Christian wedding ceremonies.

The findings of the paper (for full paper see Note 2 below) come from CSO data and show that:

• Catholic weddings accounted for 91.4pc of the total in 1994 and last year this had fallen to just 34.3pc of all ceremonies
• Church of Ireland weddings fell in that time from 2.6pc of the total to 1.1pc
• Weddings carried by by Entheos Ireland (623) alone outnumbered Church of Ireland weddings by more than two to one
• An organisation called the ‘Spiritualist Union of Ireland’ conducted 7.8pc of all weddings in the country last year
• When you add in weddings performed by other, similar organisations, they account for almost a quarter of the total, and rising
• The organisations can broadly be called ‘New Age’ and sometimes deliberately reject organised religion and pre-set ceremonies, preferring instead tailor-made, individualistic ceremonies and spiritualities.

The changes charted in the paper are massive and have taken place in a short space of time. Some of the changes are commercially driven in that hotels now offer wedding ceremonies and receptions in the same location and often direct couples to ‘New Age’ wedding organisations. Those organisations have been founded only very recently to meet the demands for weddings outside of church settings. They are in addition to civil weddings.

Officially they come under the CSO heading ‘Other religious denominations’ although few of them are denominations as such and, as mentioned, sometimes explicitly reject organised religion. It would be better for the CSO to use a different heading.

Commenting on the big change in practice, the author of the paper, Breda O’Brien said: “It is clear that the Churches need to have a think about what is happening and come up with a response. For example, at present the Catholic Church will only hold its wedding ceremonies in churches, but it is actually free to hold those weddings in other locations, like hotels, if it wanted. This is already happening in some dioceses in America, for example”.

She continued: “Unless the Churches do find a way to respond, the present trends will probably worsen from their point of view and will very likely extend to funerals as well in due course.”

She concluded: “However, it is interesting that many couples still want a spiritual dimension to their weddings. This provides an opportunity for the Churches”.

ENDS

The paper can be found in full here.