Ireland is a gorgeous country with a rich historical culture. It was also long a victim of vicious British policies that ultimately led to an impoverished nation so dependent on potatoes that, when a blight struck those potatoes, a million people died and another million abandoned Ireland, mostly for America. Through it all, though, Ireland clung to Catholicism, which gave it a unique moral grounding. However, that faith is vanishing, with leftism and Islam taking its place. No wonder that this new, antisemitic Ireland is on the verge of officially boycotting Israel.
In the Republic of Ireland, as of 2022, 69% of the population still identified as Catholic. While that number seems high, it still represents a staggering 21% decline in just 16 years. Thus, in 2006, 90% of Irish residents identified as Catholic. I’m willing to bet that, in the 2.5 years since that 2022 poll, the number of self-identified Catholics has fallen still further.
But identifying as Catholic and being Catholic are two different things (just as people can identify as Jewish but embrace antisemitic politicians who embrace ideologies demanding mass Jewish genocide). Thus, while 69% of the country “identifies” as Catholic, only 27% were attending mass as of 2020. Given the importance of the sacrament, it seems that those Catholics skipping Mass don’t really believe in the faith.
Two factors have led to the shift. One is the increasing secularization of the West thanks to leftism. Ireland held off for a long time, but it was obvious that it was losing the fight when it legalized abortion in 2018. In 2023, over 10,000 abortions were performed in Ireland. I’m betting that number is higher now, given that the number of abortions has increased by around 1,500 every year since 2019, when the first legal abortions were performed,
Then, in 2017, Ireland elected its first openly gay prime minister (or Taoiseach). Regardless of your opinions about homosexuality, the one truth is that this could never have happened in a devoutly Catholic country.
Leo Varadkar, like the current prime minister, Simon Harris, rose through the Fine Gael party, which claims to be “center right.” That’s not true by American standards of conservatism. Fine Gael has been a “social justice” party since the 1960s. It supports same sex marriage, abortion, socialized medicine, and the EU. It’s “center right” in the same way the less extremist wing of the Democrat party might be called “center right.”
The second factor in Ireland’s “value shift” may have been driven by immigration. As of 2022, Islam was the fastest-growing non-Christian religion in Ireland, with 1.6% of the population identifying as Muslim. As we’ve seen across Europe, these Muslim immigrants, unlike the enervated Europeans, take their faith seriously. And again, that was in 2022.
There hasn’t been a census since then, but Ireland’s open-to-Islam immigration policy suggests that there are a lot more than approximately 82,000 Muslims in Ireland today (as there were in 2022). Indeed, the best estimates are that the actual Muslim population has increased by .4% (or a factor of 25%) in just 2 years.
And of course, the Muslim presence is much greater in the cities, which have the numeric heft to drive a nation’s policies. (The Founders, recognizing this, in their great wisdom gave each state, regardless of size, two Senators, and instituted the Electoral College.) According to that same 2022 census (which is now probably significantly too low), the Muslim population in Ireland’s capital city of Dublin was 37,458 people. That’s a high density of Muslims.
The above introduction gets me to this news story, which I believe reflects a fusion of Ireland’s leftism and rising Islamism:
The Irish government, which has openly displayed its hatred for Israel in recent years, took another step targeting the Jewish state, becoming the first country in Europe to introduce legislation forbidding imports from the Biblical areas of Judea and Samaria.
Irish Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister and former Prime Minister Simon Harris introduced a bill titled the General Scheme of the Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill. It was passed by the Irish government and now must be approved by the Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade for Pre-Legislative Scrutiny, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Ireland, once the most Catholic country in post-WWII Europe, is on the verge of throwing its weight to a Muslim region that routinely slaughters Christians and dreams of Jewish genocide.
Periodically, the Irish people gather for fairly large anti-immigration marches that the mainstream media ignore:
IRISH RISING: Here is a drone view of the thousands that came out here in Dublin, Ireland, to protest against mass immigration. @RebelNewsOnline pic.twitter.com/JzaOei9MeT
— Efrain Flores Monsanto ???????????? (@realmonsanto) June 22, 2025
These marches are irrelevant. Unlike the Americans, who won a revolution and recognized the necessity of maintaining their arms, when the Irish threw off the British, they gave up their weapons. Their government does not fear them, but it does fear the Muslims among them. And, in any event, a left-leaning government aligns with the Muslims on most issues.
Image: The Virgin and Child from the Book of Kells. Public domain.
