KERRY LOSING FAITH IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
THE Catholic Church in Kerry is facing into a major crisis as thousands of people abandon the church.
The 2016 Census results will make for unpleasant reading for Kerry’s Catholic clergy as they show the number of practising Catholics in the county has fallen by 4,123 since 2011.
What will be of even more concern is the fact that this represents the first time since the 1991 Census that the number of Catholics in the county has fallen.
There are now 123,514 Catholics in Kerry according to the census compared with 127,637 in 2011.
The steep decline in the Catholic population is mirrored by a similar (though marginally smaller in numerical terms) increase in the number of people with no religion in the county.
The Census results show that since 2011 the number of athiests in Kerry rose by 217, meanwhile the number of Kerry people who stated they had ‘no religion’ soared upwards by 3,530.
It should be noted that the decline in belief was not solely experienced by the Catholic Church.
The Church of Ireland and wider Protestant congregation declined by 133, to stand at 3,134. The number of people who classed themselves as Christian, without specifying a congregation, also fell sharply dropping from 1,090 in 2011 to just 872 last year.
Since 2011 the number of ‘Lapsed Catholics’ in Kerry also soared going from 34 in 2011 to 201 in 2016.
One Christian branch of religion that did see an increase were the Orthodox orders whose congregations increased by 99 to 741.