Getting married in Ireland? A ceremony with Dara Molloy

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Ceremony with the Celtic Priest Dara Molloy

Getting married in Ireland: We regularly receive enquiries from people who would like to do something special in their dreamland. For example, getting married. In the summer of 2012, we reported on Michael and Jennifer, who travelled from Germany to celebrate their wedding in Killarney in County Kerry and then spend a honeymoon in their favourite country on the Atlantic. The example motivated many lovers and fans of Ireland to follow suit.

I remembered Jennifer and Michael when I met the priest Dara Molloy on a recent research trip through Connemara. Dara was coming to the mainland from the Aran island of Inishmore on his way to Galway. We sat down in Spiddal to talk about rituals, ceremonies, Celtic spirituality, the meaning of life, hope in dark times and his friend John O’Donohue. Dara is no ordinary priest.

More articles on this topic:

Michael und Jennifer get married in Ireland in May. Klick

A Wedding celebration in Ireland. Klick

For a long time in Ireland the Catholic Church had a monopoly on the important celebrations in people’s lives: Baptism, communion, confirmation, marriage and farewells – the church was the master of ceremonies. With the Christian faith and the church, these important rituals gradually disappeared from many people’s lives over the past decades.

As Irish people began to doubt the omnipotence of the Catholic Church, a younger generation of priests doubted with them. The misogyny and sexual hostility, the rigid paternalism of the people, the authoritarian education system, even the double standards and violence, put off the best in the Church’s ranks. Dara Molloy was one of them. Born in 1949, Dara grew up in Malahide near Dublin. He embarked on a career as a clergyman, was ordained in 1977 in the Society of Mary with the Marist Fathers. In 1985, the young theologian was drawn to one of Ireland’s westernmost outposts: he settled as a Celtic monk on Inis Mòr (Inishmore), the largest of the three Aran Islands in Galway Bay.

Dara Molloy

Much has happened in Dara Molloy’s life since then: In 1996, he told the assembled congregation in the church on Inishmore that he was leaving the Catholic Church, but that he would remain a priest. From the very beginning of his studies, Dara had doubted the course of the Roman Church, felt a deep connection to the ancient traditions of Celtic culture and spirituality. While the continent was dominated by Christianity of Roman provenance, Ireland retained its own Celtic Christian culture until the 12th century. The Celts lived in Europe before the Greeks and before the Romans, and their culture lasted longest on the western edges.

Dara took up these traditions, henceforth calling himself a Celtic priest, monk and druid. After separating from the church, he married the theologian and psychologist Tess Harper, with whom he has four children, run a spiritual centre and a book publisher for the publication of their own books. Dara, the Celtic priest, does not refer to a Celtic-Irish DNA, but to the mentality and mindset still rooted in Ireland and its people today, reflected in the Irish landscape, in the ancient stone monuments or in the Gaelic place names and language.

Dara Molloy is a master of ceremony and ritual: “Words are only form, power and energy lie in ritual.” As a Celtic priest, Dara keeps the power of ritual alive. He has celebrated many meaningful ceremonies for many people: baptisms, weddings, funerals, blessings, initiation and rites of passage, also forgiveness, healing and separation ceremonies. Dara has his favourite places on the island, whose energies he knows very well: holy wells, standing stones, sacred hawthorn trees, the eternal beach and the old church ruins. Places of sacred energy. In times of the Pandemic, Online became another space to gather.

Dara places the people who ask him for a ritual at the centre of the ceremony. Their beliefs he sees as the core of the celebration, as well as the place they wish to be. To do this, he also travels with the mysterious Crane Bag from his island of Inishmore to the Irish mainland and sometimes beyond. Anyone who knows the three Aran Islands can hardly imagine a better place for a ceremony with Dara Molloy. They are magical places.

If I had known Dara Molloy nine years ago, I would have recommended a ceremony with him on Inishmore to Jennifer and Michael. But who knows, even the renewal of a deep promise after ten or 15 years is worth celebrating.

Blessing with a feather, with a piece of peat, a log of oak: Dara Molloy has also been licensed to legally marry people in a civil ceremony since 2015. Dara can be reached via his website: Klick

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Foto Credits and Remarks:

All photos: Dara Molloy, except for photo 2 from top.

Dara Molloy was a close friend of John O’Donohue, to whom I devoted much of my research time last year and this year. Dara is one of those rare people who speaks openly and without reservation and says what’s what. I will report on this conversation later this year in the series on philosopher, poet and priest John O’Donohue (1956 – 2008).