A Guide to church records

Belief in God has been a mainstay of life in Ireland since early times. Today, Ireland has the highest percentage of practising Christians in Western Europe. Very few Irish people do not believe in God.

Northern Ireland : A Guide to Church Records - Website PDF 333 pages

PRONI : Guide to Church Records - Website

Surviving parish registers Church of Ireland

Anglican Record Project Online Parish Records

The National Archives of Ireland Marriage licences 1623-1866

The National Library of Ireland Catholic Parish Registers

The National Library of Ireland Family History Research PDF

The National Library of Ireland Plan a Visit

Church of Ireland Parish Registers Surrogates The National Archives

Religious Census, 1766 A Guide to Surviving Material The National Archives

The General Register Office Church Records IrishGenealogy.ie

The General Register Office Civil Records IrishGenealogy.ie

Irish Jewish Museum Irish Jewish Roots

Religious Society of Friends Historical Library in Dublin

Quakers in Ireland Findmypast.ie

Presbyterian Church in Ireland Presbyterian Historical Society

Methodist Church in Ireland Methodist Historical Society

General Register Office Northern Ireland GRONI

Civil Registration Service Health Service Executive

Section I. Religious Demography

The country has a total area of 27,136 square miles, and has a population of approximately 4 million.

The country is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. According to official government statistics collected during the 2002 census, the religious affiliation of the population is 88.4 percent Roman Catholic, 2.9 percent Church of Ireland (Anglican), 0.52 percent Presbyterian, 0.25 percent Methodist, 0.49 percent Muslim, and less than 0.1 percent Jewish. Approximately 4 percent of the population were members of other religions or had no specific religious belief.

Quick guide to PRONI records

The online leaflet series below offers additional information on the different sources for studing your family and local history.

The ‘Your Family Tree’ and ‘Local History’ series’ are designed to assist both the beginner and the more experienced researcher. They cover the most popularly consulted archives, indicating their range and content and how they can be accessed.

Other series’ relate to emigration, historical topics and more general information.

Your Family Tree Series

Local History Series

Conflict-related Court and Inquest Records

Historical Topics Series

General Information Series

Religion: the Irish experience. By J.R. Walsh 1999

CHAPTER 1: Patterns of Change. 122 pp, Veritas, 2003

1.1 Patterns of change in religious belief

(a) Patterns of religious belief in Ireland today
The total population of Ireland, north and south, at the beginning of the third millennium is just over 5.6 million (N. Ireland = 1,685,267; Republic of Ireland = 3,917,336). According to the two censuses conducted in 2001 (N. Ireland) and 2002 (Republic of Ireland), in the country as a whole 74 per cent of the population profess to be Roman Catholic, 6.7 per cent Church of Ireland and 6.6 per cent Presbyterian. It is impossible to ascertain from these statistics the level of commitment of the members of these groups: many are churchgoers, others are nominal Christians and do not practise on a regular basis, still others are only notional Christians. The censuses figures speak volumes about the identities which people perceive for themselves; they are very inflated, however, when taken with the Churches’ own assessments regarding religious practice/actual religious allegiance. They must, then, be read with caution. They should be read along with the rather different statistics emanating from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) of 1998 and the European Values Study (EVS) of 1999 (see the section entitled, ‘The European Pattern of Religious Belief’, below).

Roman Catholicism denotes the faith and practice of Christians who are in communion with the pope. Catholics profess a continued tradition of faith and worship, and hold to the apostolic succession of bishops and priests since the time of Christ. The leader of the Church in Ireland is the Archbishop of Armagh, the Primate of All-Ireland, and is usually a cardinal. The Church has twenty-six dioceses and four provinces each under a metropolitan archbishop. There are 1,365 parishes, about 3,400 diocesan or secular priests and some 20,000 religious in the island. The Irish Church has a strong missionary outreach with 2,973 priests, brothers and nuns active in more than ninety countries across the globe. The number who profess themselves to be members of the Roman Catholic Church make up 88.8 per cent of the population of the Republic and 40.3 per cent of the population of N. Ireland.

The Church of Ireland is a self-governing church within Anglicanism and is therefore in communion with the see of Canterbury. The bases of Anglican self-understanding, preaching and doctrine include the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-nine Articles and the two Books of Homilies. The Archbishop of Armagh, the Primate of All-Ireland, and the Archbishop of Dublin, the Primate of Ireland, lead the Church. It has twelve dioceses, approximately 470 parishes and some 540 priests or ministers (who can be male or female). Up until 1869 the Church of Ireland was the state church and since then its chief legislative body has been the general synod made up of the bishops and representatives of clergy and laity. In the Republic 3 per cent of the population profess to be members of the Church of Ireland, while in N. Ireland it is 15.3 per cent.

The Presbyterian Church in Ireland is governed by ministers and elders through four interrelated bodies: (a) the session of the local congregation consisting of the minister and the elected elders; (b) the presbytery (of which there are twenty-one in Ireland), made up of ministers and representative elders from within a defined area, overseeing sessions, congregations and ministers within its area; (c) the synod consisting of the presbyteries of a larger specific area; and (d) the general assembly of ministers and elders elected by the presbyteries throughout Ireland. Within each of these bodies ministers and elders have equal voices and decisions are reached after a ballot. The Westminster Confession of Faith, drafted by the Puritan English Parliament in 1643, is the chief doctrinal standard of Presbyterians who believe in the authority of the Scriptures in regard to Christian living. The leader of the Church in Ireland is the moderator, always a minister, who is elected for a one-year term of office. There are some 560 active ministers and assistants in Ireland. The ministry was opened to women in 1972. In the Republic 0.57 per cent of the population profess Presbyterianism, with 20.7 per cent in N. Ireland.

Of the remaining 12.8 per cent of the population of the whole island, nearly half (5.7 per cent) prefer not to state their religious affiliation or claim to have no religion, being agnostics, atheists or Humanists. (The readiness of a small but significant percentage of Irish people to claim ‘no religion’ is seen as an indicator of a movement towards a more secular society. This supposed trend should be viewed, however, along with the Republic of Ireland’s ‘almost universal theism’ mentioned in Section c below.) Others belong to Christian denominations like Methodists (recognised as the fourth largest denomination in Ireland), Baptists, Congregationalists, Free Presbyterians, Christian Brethren, Non-Subscribing Presbyterians, Reformed Presbyterians, Evangelical Presbyterians, Pentecostals, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), Moravians and Lutherans. Some of these Christians are members of the Orthodox Church or the Salvation Army. A number adhere to non-Trinitarian Churches like Unitarians, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Church of the Latter-day Saints (Mormons). A tiny minority are members of sects or cults, some of which are discussed below, and there are small but increasing numbers of the other great world religions – Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism – or of offshoots of these like the Baha’i faith. Judaism, the faith and practice of the Jewish people, with its acceptance of the idea of a single, unique, incorporeal God who will ultimately redeem the world through his Messiah, is long established in Ireland. Non-proselytising, it has some 1500 members in the island, mostly in the Dublin and Belfast areas. It is only in recent times and particularly in the last ten years that the other great world religions mentioned above have impacted on Ireland (see Section e below). According to the 2002 census in the Republic there are 19,147 Muslims, 3,894 Buddhists and 3,099 Hindus. With 0.49 per cent of the population Islam is the fouth largest religious grouping in the Republic.

Christianity, then, is a vital force in Ireland, which has the highest percentage of practising members in Western Europe. Ireland also has a small but significant number of people who are committed members of other faiths. Very few Irish people do not believe in God.

Brief History

The Church of Ireland traces its history to the early Irish Church founded by St Patrick. The early Irish Church was primarily monastic in nature but gradually a diocesan structure took shape and bishops assumed increasing authority.

In 1534, the English Parliament declared Henry VIII head of the Church of England in response to the refusal of the Pope to grant an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Two years later, the Irish Parliament declared him head of the Church of Ireland. Initially the dispute was a jurisdictional one and while Henry desired independence from the Papacy, he was theologically catholic. However, Henry VIII’s successors, Edward VI (1547–1553) and Elizabeth I (1558–1603) were more reform–minded and their reigns marked the introduction of Protestantism to both the Church of Ireland and the Church of England.

The reformation split the Irish church. The established Church of Ireland was protestant, state approved and supported. The Roman Catholic Church was regarded with hostility and suspicion by the authorities but nevertheless supported by the majority of the people, particularly outside Dublin, where the crown’s authority was weakest. Each church maintained it was the authentic successor of the pre–reformation Irish church. The plantations of Ulster in 1610 saw the introduction of Presbyterianism to Ireland. The fourth major Christian church in Ireland today, the Methodist church, dates from the first visit to Ireland by John Wesley in 1747.

Although a minority, the Church of Ireland remained the established Church until the UK Parliament’s passage of the Irish Church Act 1870. The Act disestablished the Church of Ireland and separated it from the Church of England. It also provided that the Church of Ireland would be self governing and have no connection with the crown or the state. To provide for its own government, the Church of Ireland created a General Synod, comprising about 650 elected clergy and laity, along with the bishops of the Church. The Church of Ireland was one of the first Anglican Churches to adopt this form of Government and it was to prove a model for Anglican churches worldwide. The Irish Church Act also provided for a ‘Representative Church Body’, consisting of elected clergy and laity to manage the Church’s property and finances and the ‘RCB’ continues to do this today. Churches in Ireland

A Guide to church records ...