‘New Age’ weddings hit record high while marriages hit record low

Catholic marriages and civil marriages are now almost neck and neck, according to the latest figures from the CSO. Soon enough, there will be more civil wedding ceremonies than Catholic ones. In addition, Ireland’s marriage rate has now dropped to the lowest level ever recorded, outside of the Covid years when we were locked down a lot of the time.

What’s going on? Well, we are obviously becoming a lot more secular, but it is not quite as simple as that. Many people opting for non-church ceremonies are not turning their back on the Church per se, rather it is often the case that is it simply convenient for them to have both the wedding ceremony and the reception in the same nice hotel in the same beautiful setting. Maybe if the Church was willing to let its priests preside at wedding ceremonies in hotels, the number of Catholic weddings would rise again, somewhat anyway. I’ll come back to this.

But first let’s take a look at the sheer amount of change that has happened to how we marry in the last few decades. For example, in 1994, Catholic weddings still accounted for 91.4% of the total. Last year, according to the new CSO report, this had fallen by almost two-thirds to 32.6%. That is an incredible transformation. Any priest will tell you they do far fewer weddings than once upon a time.

Notice, however, that a third of weddings are neither civil in nature, nor Catholic. In fact, if you add up all the weddings that took place last year which were neither civil nor Catholic, it comes to 35.2% of the total, bigger than the other two categories. That total includes same-sex weddings.

Humanist

Let’s dig a bit further into the weddings that make up that 35.2%.  Of these, 7.4% were conducted by the Humanist Association. That is, they were secular in character. The Human Association is basically an atheist organisation. The number of ‘humanist’ ceremonies has fallen a bit.

A tiny 0.9% were conducted by the Church of Ireland, which is also down two-thirds compared with 1994, so they were not resisting the trends overtaking Catholic weddings.

A total of 7.1% were conducted by something called the ‘Spiritualist Union of Ireland’, which you have probably never heard of.

But a category of weddings called ‘other religious’ came to just under 20% of the total at 19.8%.

Now, you may think this must be made up mainly of other Christian ceremonies, plus some Muslim and Hindus ones. But this is incorrect.

In fact, they are almost entirely conducted by what might be loosely called ‘New Age’ organisations, as shown by an Iona Institute paper published last year called ‘The rapid rise of New Age weddings in Ireland: How should the Churches respond?’.

It found that in 2023, 623 weddings were conducted by an organisation called ‘Entheos’, and 532 by one called the ‘One Spirit Interfaith Foundation’. There are many other such organisations in the wedding business.

‘Entheos’ was founded by someone who calls herself the ‘Bald Priestess’. She was a campaigner for the repeal of the 8th amendment. On its website, Entheos says it was founded “to serve people who have been ostracised, marginalised or otherwise left behind by traditional faith paths on the basis of gender, race, sexual orientation, ability, nationality, parental / family status or any other reason.”

It allows people to pick and choose the type of ceremony they want, and they can add elements from any religious or spiritual tradition. It is a deliberately ultra-individualistic approach to spirituality that deliberately eschews the given way of doing things that the Churches offer. No set formula is followed, no tradition.

Does the rise in popularity in ‘New Age’ weddings mean the Irish themselves have become ‘New Age’ in outlook? The answer is yes and no”

All the other organisations offering ‘New Age’ type ceremonies have a similar outlook.

Does the rise in popularity in ‘New Age’ weddings mean the Irish themselves have become ‘New Age’ in outlook? The answer is yes and no. They are not suddenly attending Entheos ceremonies regularly, and in any case, the likes of Entheos deliberately reject anything so organised. This would make it too much like a denomination, and it doesn’t want to become that.

In addition, most people who have had an Entheos celebrant at their wedding probably never heard of the organisation before they began to plan their wedding or the hotel suggested them. An awful lot of the growth in the popularity of these ceremonies has to do with the fact that wedding ceremonies can now take place in hotels. This was fantastic for hotels from a business point of view, and also for these ‘New Age’ organisations that seem to have set up in some cases to take advantage of being able to do weddings in hotels. Do not underestimate the commercial aspect to all this.

So, I don’t think Irish couples are going out of their way to find a ‘New Age’ wedding celebrant or would consider themselves to be ‘New Age’. But on the other hand, they probably do consider themselves to be ‘spiritual’ rather than ‘religious’ and their spiritual beliefs are individualistic and mix-and-match and have no real connection to a wider religious community which is at the heart of so-called ‘organised’ religion, meaning you belong to a religious community with shared beliefs and practices that is bigger than you.

The rise in ‘New Age’ and civil ceremonies is, in my opinion, closely connected to the fall in marriage rates generally, and not just here in Ireland. Only 3.8 marriages per thousand adults took place in Ireland last year. This is down from 7 per thousand at one point in the 1970s and 4 per thousand in 2023. A further fall is perfectly possible.

In addition, the age of which people marry keeps rising, if they marry at all.

Birth Rates

In turn, this is connected to the big fall in birth/fertility rates, which are now well below replacement level, and falling further.

A society that becomes more individualistic in its goals, not only sees a turning away from organised religion, it also sees a turning away from other big commitments like marriage and even, as it is becoming ever more apparent, having children. As the population ages, expect ever fewer marriages per thousand adults and fewer children.

What the Churches need to do is consider whether there is anything to be gained from offering to conduct wedding ceremonies inside hotels as a form of ‘light’ evangelisation. It would be interesting to see the take-up rate.

But above all, they need to remain confident in their basic vision of marriage and the family because it offers a much more positive vision of society than the highly individualistic and materialist one that is resulting in fewer marriage and fewer children and an ageing society. The Churches offer something much better than that.