More people attend church once a week than in any other Judeo-Christian society.
The flourishment of Catholicism is due in part to its early embracement of Celtic beliefs, rather than wiping them out. At a popular level, to the discomfort of the Catholic Church, early pagan Catholicism remains very much alive. In many rural areas, acts of devotion at holy wells, vestigial shrines of forgotten water spirits, survive in a Christianised form.