The Evangelical magazine World recently ran a fun piece looking at the stereotypes of Christians that you meet in movies. Check them out and you’ll see that many of the types cross over to Catholic movie characters, as well. But it got me thinking about specifically Catholic character tropes that we often encounter on the big screen or television. Here are few pulled (and in some cases composited) from the haze of my memory. What others would you add?
The Overly Formal Cleric
Calls everybody “my son” and “my daughter.” Drinks tea in his wood-paneled rectory. Speaks with a British accent no matter where the movie is set. (Cousin of the Irish Cleric, who smiles more and keeps a flask in his cassock.)
The Childlike Nun
Always fresh-faced and bubbly. Leads Bible songs on her weathered guitar. Someday will turn into the Hatchet-Faced nun, but for now is all sunshine.
The Parochial School Survivor
Complains about getting his hands whacked with a ruler when he was a kid, even though this hasn’t been done for about seventy years. Likes to begin his diatribes against the Church with stories of dubious accuracy that begin with, “When I was in Catholic school…”
The Hoodlum with a Crucifix
Italian-Americans in gangster movies have been the most common representatives of this trope, but you can just as easily come across a Columbian drug lord or IRA bomber fingering a rosary in one hand and machine gun in the other.
The Compassionate Heretic
A Catholic species of the “Wise Heretic” from the World article, this character can be lay, clerical, or religious but is in any case meant to be taken as a model of real Catholicism. Offers specious explanations and justifications to help other characters square their false or immoral ideas with their faith.
The Repressed Ascetic
Usually female, this character exemplifies the mousy, humorless, uptight vision of piety to which non-believers imagine full adherence to Catholicism must lead. Very concerned about burning in hell.
“How Do You Do, Fellow Catholics?”
Hollywood screenwriters tend not to be, or to know, any normal Catholic churchgoers, but sometimes a plot point requires them to think one up. Or harder still, to awkwardly write them into a Catholic scenario like Mass, confession, or family prayers. This character is the ersatz product of their ill-informed imagination, using Catholic-sounding phrases and surrounded by Catholic-looking props… but everything is just a little off.