Over the past decade we have seen a proliferation of vandalism against statues and churches, as well as robberies and assaults on priests.
Not all these incidents point directly to anti-Catholicism, but they all speak of a culture that does not respect the Church and its sacred mission, and in many cases of an enmity that is deep, nasty and, if our European neighbours are anything to go by, is going to get worse.
Ireland is a different place from 50 or even 20 years ago. Once a bastion of the Faith, there has been an increasingly anti-Catholic turn since the beginning of this century. Some of this has to do with the abuse crisis and its cover-up; some with a political and cultural elite that delights in putting the Church down.
One could choose any number of examples to back this up, whether the threats of the present government to forcibly take property from religious orders, leading members of national parties shouting ‘Get them out’ of education, or the general demonisation of priests and religious after the abuse reports.
Unsurprisingly, studies show that the Irish public also holds a negative view of the Church. If they read the news, listen to politicians, or watch Irish media, the average Irish citizen receives only one perspective on priests, religious and laity, and it is a very unflattering one.
One 2025 study from the Iona Institute indicates that 40 per cent of the Irish public holds unfavourable views of the Church and that they overestimate the numbers of clergy involved in sexual abuse by four to one. Anecdotally, priests have spoken in the past about taking off or hiding their collars for fear of verbal abuse.
Given the anti-Catholic climate, it stands to reason that Church personnel and infrastructure would come under attack.
The cases highlighted at the start of this article can be read in that light, and there are others, such as the desecration of a crypt in a church in Dublin in 2023, the torching of an altar cloth in a Kerry church in 2023, the invasion of a Mass by protesters in Cork in 2022, and, most disturbingly of all, the attempted arson of a parish house in Louth that had earlier been defaced with ‘satanic’ graffiti in 2025.
The fact is that the past few years have brought a small but steady flow of aggressive acts against priests and churches.
But while significant coverage is given to the far smaller number of far-right attacks on mosques – heinous crimes in their own right – only a handful of politicians and pundits have addressed anti-Catholic hate. That is because the prevailing narrative centres on the evil right-wing forces at work behind the scenes in Ireland.
It takes no account of those at work in the foreground: left-wing activists who vilify the Church in parliament and in the media, who invade churches or, as happened in Kerry in 2022, surround them because they were unhappy about a homily that attacked their policies. If the present anti-Catholic rhetoric continues – if our cultural and political leaders refuse to look in the mirror – the climate is only going to worsen, and I fear attacks will increase.
This type of overtly anti-Catholic violence against the Church is still rare, thankfully, compared with countries such as France, Germany and the UK. What perhaps mitigates against this at present is our comparatively lower levels of net inward migration and the persistence of an emotional affection for local churches and priests. Our cultural Catholicism may offer some degree of a buffer against widespread anti-Catholicism.
But that does not mean Ireland should become complacent. As the cases above highlight – and I include here those attacks against mosques – we are already drifting towards the breakdown in social cohesion afflicting our European neighbours, which clearly leads to violence. Even latent affection may not be relied upon in the long run, and a spike in violence of a different kind suggests that it may already be wearing thin.
Attacks on and robberies of priests and clergy, largely in isolated rural parishes and in deprived parts of Irish cities, have become a consistent theme since the 2010s, when Garda first warned priests to protect themselves. They have not abated over time. The attacks are often violent, including spraying priests with bleach, striking them with hammers and even stabbings.
These kinds of attacks may have an anti-Catholic motive, but that is not certain. What they do indicate, though, is that churches and priests are no longer seen in any way as sacred. It was once the case that churches offered inviolable places of sanctuary, where criminals could not be captured, nor would they attack them.
Priests operated an open-door policy – this still is largely the case – with a tacit acknowledgement that they were not to be targets for crime. Even if your parish priest was imperfect, he still held some sway by virtue of his position, and this swung both ways.
Yes, the priest was put in a sometimes unhealthy exalted position; but he was also set apart so that, if your actions had broken the boundaries of the acceptable, you would be able to turn to him.
That is not the case any more.
Priests are just another potential target, their houses and churches another possible source of cash and valuables. Criminals see no boundary as being crossed, no tacit or explicit contracts broken. To me, these attacks speak of a society that has lost its sense of anything sacred at all.
It is here that we find an intersection with anti-Catholic sentiment. But that cannot alone be blamed, because the Church is meant to be the keeper and disseminator of the sacred in society.
We have failed in that task in Ireland, both in our moral failures and abuses and in our catechetical and liturgical practices.
This is not to say that priests are to blame for being victims of violent crime. It is to say that we are mistaken if we feel that our Catholic heritage will provide a buffer should atomisation and social breakdown deepen, as they have in our European counterparts.
But while our enemy’s behaviour is not in our control – except in so far as we use our vote – the sacred is our domain, and we should be actively working to recover that dormant sense in our fellow Irish men and women.
If we do not, then it is obvious that the Irish will continue to see the Church not as a revelation of Christ, but as just another wayward institution.