Welcome back to The Word on Fire show. I'm Matthew Petrusik, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute, and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us.

Hollywood is not known for being friendly to Christianity in general or Catholicism in particular, especially nowadays.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of storylines and characters that mock and even demonize believers.

At the same time, however, whenever the film

industry wishes to depict a religious-looking scene or add a transcendent element to the plot,

it frequently employs Catholic architecture, Catholic sacramentals, and even Catholic priests

to do so. So what should we make of this ambivalence to the faith? What does Hollywood get wrong?

And perhaps, to our surprise, what does Hollywood get right about Catholicism and the priesthood?

And what do these portrayals tell us more broadly about the entertainment industry's potential openness

to God's existence, the divinity of Christ, good and evil, and even life after death.

Here to take a look at some pivotal, classic, and contemporary films that prominently feature

Catholicism and Catholic priests with an eye to unpacking their significance for the wider

entertainment culture is Bishop Robert Barron. And alert, there will be spoilers.

Music It's Bishop Robert Barron. And alert, there will be spoilers. Bishop, welcome back to the studio.

Thanks, Matt.

Always good to be with you.

So today we're looking at the relationship between Hollywood and the portrayal of Catholicism in general and Catholic priests in particular.

Before we get to that, have you seen any good or perhaps not so good movies recently?

A few.

Now, this will be airing, I think, after the Oscars.

We're recording it prior to the Oscars, but I like to see some of the Oscar-nominated movies. So I saw Sinners recently. I saw Marty Supreme recently. And I saw Hamnet. And all were interesting in their own way. I'm going to, now this is kind of, I'll go on a limb, now this is prior to the Osc, and say, sinners is going to win best picture.

And I'm saying for the same reason I predicted years ago that the shape of water would win, and indeed it did. So we'll see now if I'm right. I don't know. And I've actually written something on sinners that will be coming out. But, you know, Hamnet, I like to, I'm a big Shakespeare guy. and Hamann. It's an interesting look at, you know, the death of Shakespeare's son and how that influenced his writing of Hamlet.

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