A major new poll commissioned by The Iona Institute reveals public attitudes towards the Catholic Church, Christianity and religion. This is one of the most wide-ranging polls published to date on the matter. It was carried out by Amarach Research.

Here are the major findings:

• People are much more favourably disposed towards Catholic teachings than towards the institution
• They are also more open to Christianity in general
• 61pc of people say they are religious or spiritual or both
• ‘Gen Z’ respondents (18-24-years-olds) are a lot more open to religion than their ‘Millennial’ counterpart (25-34-year-olds).

As you might expect, there is a considerable amount of hostility towards the Catholic Church as an institution, chiefly because of the scandals, with one in four people saying they would be happy if the Church vanished from Ireland completely. This section of the public seems very overrepresented in certain sections of society such as the arts, entertainment and the media to judge by recent movies, documentaries and newspaper coverage in general.

However, there is still surprising receptivity towards Catholic teachings and towards Christianity which is good news for the Churches.

A recent poll called ‘The Quiet Revival‘ showed that among young people in Britain, there has been a surprising jump in the number attending church in the last six years. Among 18-24-year-olds, regular church attendance has jumped from 4pc to 16pc since 2018.

Our new poll shows that whereas only 6pc of those aged 25-34 consider themselves religious, this jumps to 17pc among 18-24-year-olds. So is something similar starting to emerge here as in Britain, something the Churches can take advantage of?

The full poll findings are here and below is a summary in charts of a number of them.

Attitude to Catholic teachings:

Attitude towards Christianity:

Attitude towards the Catholic Church

Attitude towards priests