Strong demand for Catholic marriage, Accord says 

Accord said pre-marriage courses provided an opportunity for engaged couples to discuss the current strength of their relationship and areas that would benefit from further development.

There is still a strong demand for Catholic marriage, the church has claimed, citing the fact that pre-marriage courses by Accord have returned to pre-pandemic levels.

According to the most recent data available from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), in 2021 Catholic ceremonies were the most popular form at 39%, followed by civil ceremonies at 34%.

However, the popularity of these two forms of ceremonies for opposite-sex couples has been in decline since 2014, when they accounted for 87% of all marriage ceremonies.

In 2019, Accord provided 285 marriage preparation programmes to 4,610 couples with 2022 seeing the same number of couples on 297 programmes.

Director of Accord Tony Shanahan said it was “reassuring” to see attendance figures for Accord marriage preparation courses back up to their pre-Covid levels.

“When we consider that, for 2021, the CSO reported that religious ceremonies accounted for 57% of all marriages in the State, and that the 6,721 Catholic marriages that year amounted to 39% of the total figure, then Accord’s data of today paints a positive picture in terms of the numbers who are planning a church marriage in the future,” he said.

Those attending pre-marriage courses have fallen from the most recent high in 2018 of 5,087.

According to Accord’s data, 29 couples (0.63%) under or up to the age of 20 were due to have a Catholic marriage, while 1,293 (29%) couples between the age of 21 and 30 were due to wed.

The highest number of those due to marry in 2022 were in the 31-40 age bracket at 2661 couples (59%) while 282 couples (6%) between the ages of 41-50 were also due to wed.

This follows the CSO’s trend of brides and grooms tying the knot at an older age.

In 2021, the average age for brides was 35.4 years and 37.4 years for grooms, while the overall average was 40.

Some 1,977 of those couples (44%) marrying in 2022 were in a relationship for between six to 10 years before tying the knot while 1341 (30%) were in a relationship for between three to five years.

At the higher end of the scale, 765 couples (17%) were together for 11 years or more before getting engaged while 236 couples (5%) were together for up to two years before doing so.

According to Accord’s data, 1,138 (25%) couples had children together prior to being engaged while 3,181 (71%) did not.

Accord offers counselling for Catholic couples. It said pre-marriage courses provided an opportunity for engaged couples to discuss the current strength of their relationship and areas that would benefit from further development.