The Influence of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Religion: The Case of Ireland

Despite being a small island nation on Europe’s western periphery, Ireland was not inoculated from the broad and deep impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic evident in other societies. In general, state-imposed restrictions in Ireland were among the strongest in Europe. This chapter considers both the legal and the sociological aspects of the pandemic’s influence on religion in Ireland, focusing mainly on Catholic religiosity. Regarding the legal aspect, I show how religious groups pushed back against restrictions by leaning into a broad range of factors, including religion’s social well-being contribution, the right to religious freedom, the legal ambivalences of government restrictions, the relative transmission risks of secular versus religious settings, and divergences from the treatment of religious groups in other European societies. On the sociological side, I show how the pandemic impacted ordinary devotees, as well as how religious groups responded to restrictions through various forms of adaptation. Additionally, I show how restrictions fostered greater interreligious exchange as well as stoking church–state tensions amid the perceived marginalisation of religious interests by state actors. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the larger takeaway of the Irish case.