In Post-Catholic Ireland, The Emergence Of A New Kind Of Clergy
DUBLIN — On an overcast January afternoon in the Irish town of Kildare, Úna-Minh Kavanagh married Pádhraic O'Hanrahan in a short, but sweet, wedding ceremony by an area surrounded by green fields in the outskirts of town.
Gathered at the on-site chapel of the Clanard Court Hotel, about an hour’s drive from Dublin, Kavanagh stood in a wavy red Vietnamese dress with gold sequins and a rounded red headpiece. Across from her stood the groom, O’Hanrahan, who was clad in a dark green tuxedo with a cranberry-colored boutonniere.
“I want to take a moment to really welcome first of all our couple, Úna-Minh and Pádhraic, as you prepare to cross the threshold of life together,” said the wedding’s officiator, a secular celebrant named Karen Dempsey. She stood between the happy couple in a white, vernal dress.
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But it soon became clear that even secular ceremonies have moments of sanctity. Midway through the wedding, Dempsey led the couple and their families in an elaborate candle-lighting ritual. The mothers of the bride and groom lit red candles in honor of their children. Later, Kavanagh and O’Hanrahan took the two candles and, at the same time, used the flames to light a single larger “unity candle,” symbolizing the light and love the two will bring into the world.
Ireland, once a bastion of Catholicism, has become a more secular, pluralistic nation. In the 2022 Ireland census, 14% of respondents reported having no religion, according to the Central Statistics Office of Ireland. That’s a rise of nearly 100,000 people since the 2016 census. With more Irish people moving away from organized religion, nonreligious weddings, like the one celebrated by Kavanagh and O'Hanrahan, are becoming increasingly common.
In 2022, over a third of weddings in Ireland were nonreligious ceremonies, either conducted as civil marriages or by the Humanist Association: the only secular body in Ireland empowered by the government to carry out weddings. Over the past five years, the number of nonreligious weddings has almost reached parity with the number of weddings performed by the Catholic Church, according to CSO data.
Kavanagh, 32, explained that like many Irish millennials, she grew up in a transition period in Ireland in which church and state were in the process of separating.
Both she and O’Hanrahan were raised Catholic, but over time, “religion became less and less important to us,” she said.
Many of her friends opted for traditional Catholic weddings to appease older generations — but she and O’Hanrahan wanted something more personalized that honored every facet of their identities and heritages.
This resulting wedding blended both religious and nonreligious rituals. The reading of vows stems from medieval Christianity, but the lighting of remembrance and unity candles is a more modern tradition not associated with any particular faith.
Kavanagh’s dilemma raises a question typical of a generation in transition: For life milestones as personal as a wedding or funeral, are the options of whether to include faith elements in a secular person’s ceremony ever so cut and dry?
Enter Entheos Ireland, a nonprofit organization that serves this growing segment of Irish society that lives outside of traditional forms of faith. Dempsey, who orchestrated O’Hanrahan and Kavanagh’s wedding, launched Entheos Ireland out of her home office in Dublin in 2021.
Over lattes in The Outhouse LGBTQ+ Centre in Dublin, Dempsey, 45, explained how Entheos Ireland was designed to meet the needs of the most vulnerable members of Irish society.
“So anybody who's been ostracized, marginalized or otherwise left behind by traditional faith paths, on the grounds of gender, sexual orientation, family status, race, gender identity, religion, any of that kind of thing,” Dempsey said.
For example, Entheos organizes “Died With Pride” funerals for LGBTQ+ people, which involve LGBTQ+ solemnizers overseeing the ceremony. Some queer people may have experienced discrimination from institutionalized religion in their lifetime, explained Dempsey, so the initiative allows the deceased to be memorialized on their own terms.
Dempsey’s journey to founding Entheos is personal. At 26, shortly after giving birth to her first son, Dempsey developed alopecia and lost all of her hair. The experience made her reevaluate her life goals to that point and consider the many privileges she previously took for granted. She decided to dedicate herself to a career of helping others.
While working as an end-of-life nurse and discussing religion and death with her patients, Dempsey wrestled with some of the big questions that led her to founding Entheos in 2021.
“People were having these big existential questions with me that they are not sure what they believe, especially as they face their own death or they encounter the death of another person,” Dempsey said. “And they would ask me, what do you believe?”
The organization’s name originates from the Greek word for “enthusiasm,” which literally means, “inspired by the divine within,” said Dempsey. Instead of believing in an external, anthropomorphized version of God, Entheism believes that the divine exists internally within all of us, allowing for a view of sanctity that encompasses everyone, regardless of faith.
Entheos is only three years old, but Dempsey emphasized that alternative faith paths in Ireland are nothing new.
For example, a popular Entheos ritual, “handfasting,” which involves participants stretching out their arms and wrapping their hands together with a ribbon, originates from the ancient Irish Brehon Laws, which long predate Christianity. The Brehon Laws’ emphasis on gender equality and immaterialism facilitate “one of the fairest forms of marriage we can have,” Dempsey said in a training video.
Even the term “Entheism” is itself an ideology coined by the 16th century Irish philosopher John Toland, who vocally criticized the Catholic Church. While Dempsey did not know about Toland’s life when devising the name, she later embraced the coincidence.
“The church didn’t always have that tremendously strong grip,” said Dempsey, “And the Irish people were always very powerful in our creativity,” she added.
While Entheism is not a religion, per se, the government of Ireland’s registry of solemnizers lists Entheos Ireland solemnizers as “religious.”
“I would rather not have the word religious involved with us,” said Dempsey.
Instead, she views Entheism as a philosophy, whereby belief in a specific deity is irrelevant.
But the designation as religious is a useful loophole. It allows Entheos’ celebrants to incorporate elements of faith into people’s ceremonies if they so desire, such as a Hindu “mehndi” ceremony or Christian vows, in a way that a totally secular officiating body could not.
As of March 2024, there are 65 celebrants at Entheos who perform ceremonies in every county of the Republic of Ireland. Dempsey says there are already over 80 people on the waiting list for its September training session. Many celebrants at Entheos were raised with traditional faith.
Keith Thompson, 38, an arts worker in Galway and a recent graduate of Entheos’ training program, recalled how he was raised Protestant but later embraced Buddhism while traveling through southeast Asia. After returning to Ireland, Thompson became fascinated with how ancient Celtic religions intersected with eastern faiths.
“There seems to be a burgeoning movement of people who are searching for a spiritual connection but finding it in much older traditional things,” said Thompson.
“An odd mix of Pagan, Buddhist, with yoga, like they’re finding the links with them,” he added.
Thompson worked as a secular pastor for the Humanist Organization for some time before eventually discovering Entheos. To him, Entheos was the better fit, because it still valued spirituality rather than total, clinical rationalism.
“I was like, OK, here's a group that is not specifically saying we are, you know, supporting one religion or another, but it's inclusive of all,” he said.
Another celebrant, Mary McGarry, 64, finished her training at Entheos in June last year. Over tea, McGarry, explained how she was raised Catholic in Dublin left the church two decades ago after a sour experience with a priest, as well as disillusionment with how the church fueled sectarian violence during the Troubles.
Nonetheless, McGarry said she still often visits churches in Dublin today “just for the silence, just for the energy that churches provided,” she said. “I also love that my ancestors would have knelt and prayed in these churches as well,” she added.
McGarry’s wish to satisfy her desire for spirituality and connection without what she saw as religious dogma eventually led to her enrolling to become an Entheos Ireland celebrant in 2022.
“I just hopped on board, and it was one of the most in-depth, heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching, tearful experiences in my whole life,” said McGarry of Entheos Ireland’s training program.
“It literally shook me to my core,” she said.
If that sounds like an intense training program, that’s because Dempsey says it is designed to be.
Similar to how becoming a Catholic or Anglican priest can involve enrolling in a divinity school, the process to becoming a celebrant at Entheos Ireland is around the length of an academic year. Dempsey says it is an emotionally challenging process that involves signing a commitment to challenging heteronormativity, racism and homophobia.
The training for Entheos costs about €2,500 ($2,700), but Dempsey also offers scholarships to celebrants who self-identify as part of a marginalized community.
“So that everybody can have a ceremony held by a person that they resonate with from within their own community,” Dempsey said. To her, having a team that reflects the reality of a diversifying Ireland was paramount.
Back in County Dublin, three months after her wedding day, Kavanagh expressed gratitude and joy toward Dempsey for providing a personal touch to her January ceremony.
“We knew that Karen would be non-judgmental about any aspect of our wedding,” said Kavanagh over email.
“We were allowed to create a celebration that was truly ‘ours,’” she wrote.
In a modern move, Kavanagh gave Dempsey a personal shoutout after uploading her wedding video on Instagram in early April.
“Karen is phenomenal,” she wrote in the video’s caption, tagging Dempsey’s social media moniker, The Bald Priestess.
In the comment section, Dempsey responded with an expression of love fit for a 21st century spiritual leader — with heart emojis.
Samuel Eli Shepherd, a student at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, wrote this story as part of a study-tour in Ireland, sponsored by the Scripps Howard Foundation.