After decades of decline, signs suggest that Ireland’s younger generation might be leading a quiet return to faith. Research from the Bible Society and the recent Iona Institute poll points to a stabilisation and, in some places, a rising of church attendance among Gen Z.
Exploring what this means for the future, the Iona Institute recently hosted a youth conference asking – “Does Gen Z have a future without religion?”
Bishop Niall Coll opened the day urging a move toward a more ‘catechumenal’ Church that accompanies people into faith. Prof. Stephen Bullivant added that recent data suggests that the decline may have ‘bottomed out’, offering grounds for cautious optimism.
Building upon these reflections, Fr Conor McDonough OP, addressed this new trend saying “I’m convinced the Holy Spirit is at work in every generation working in all kinds of unexpected ways.” Yet renewal, he warned, brings both opportunities and risks.
Where faith is reawakening among young people, the Church must avoid absorbing the less healthy traits of the culture it seeks to speak to. “Whenever the Church engages in mission, building bridges to cultures which do not know Christ, there’s always the risk that… it might unconsciously take on some negative aspects of that culture.”
Fr McDonough highlighted six “opportunities and risks” from disillusionment with secularism, to the search for personal meaning, lack of Church ‘baggage’, and the rise of online evangelisation. “Many young people have come to realise that a godless universe is necessarily a universe lacking in purpose or colour,” he said, though zeal can “harden into a sense of superiority.”
He noted a certain scepticism among older Catholics who caution that faith must be lived as well as professed. To this he raised the question, “Is the question of service sufficiently prominent among young believers? Do we as the Church present opportunities for service to young believers?”
Fr McDonough said such renewal will depend on a Church that lives from prayer and service. “Our first task each day,” he reminded listeners, “is to receive the Holy Spirit afresh and to be rooted in Christ through prayer, the reading of Scripture, the sacraments and works of mercy.”
