A recent survey commissioned by Accord has highlighted that a majority of Catholics in Ireland still wish to marry in the Church, despite evolving trends in wedding choices.
The study carried out by Amárach Research, was discussed at the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference last week during their Autumn 2025 General Meeting in Maynooth.
Among non-married Catholics, 60% reported that they would like to get married in a church.
However, awareness of different ceremonial options remains low – with 53% being unaware that it is possible to have a Church wedding without a Mass.
77% also did not know that couples already married civilly can later be married sacramentally in the Church through a ceremony known as Convalidation.
Speaking with The Irish Catholic, Accord director Tony Shanahan explained the motivation behind commissioning the study.
He said, “Catholic marriages last year were 33% of the total marriages. Maybe 15 years ago or so there wasn’t an awful lot of choice, you either had a religious wedding or a civil wedding, that was it. Now you can have humanist weddings or spiritualist weddings.”
“We wanted to find out what is the attitude of Catholics nowadays to getting married and also, do they know the options available to them as Catholics.”
“If you think you have to have a Mass as well as a wedding, that can be off-putting for people who are not regular church goers or if they may think that their guests wouldn’t like to attend a Mass”
Mr Shanahan also concluded with an optimistic note.
“The message we take is very positive – that the faith is still alive in the sense of the spiritual”, he said.
“The command of Jesus was to ‘love one another, as I have loved you’, and it’s for that reason that we believe we can share with people practices and principles and how they can choose to have a loving response to their partner and their family.”
