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"Most films and television shows try to balance out the portrayal of a Muslim extremist with the representation of reasonable Muslims or at least reasonable Arabs," Derrickson added. "Often that kind of concern for balance doesn't apply to Catholic representation. Showing a corrupt priest doesn't demand any counter-balancing representation."

But Derrickson took issue with "the Michael Medved argument that Hollywood is ideologically anti-Christian. It's not—it's pro-money, and little else. I'm not saying there aren't anti-Christians within Hollywood—there are some—but anti-Christians exist within every industry. Hollywood has produced many positive and inspired portrayals of Christianity, and many lazy and inaccurate ones."

"I don't think Catholicism is shown that kind of deference," agreed Ron Schmidt, S.J., a Los Angeles documentary filmmaker as well as a Jesuit priest. "Certainly there was no deference shown to Catholicism in The Da Vinci Code." But Schmidt—whose Hollywood parish includes film-industry professionals—disputed the characterization of Hollywood culture as broadly anti-Catholic. "There's a lot of secularity," he said, "but at the same time I see writers and people attempting to do good things and make meaningful movies."

DiCerto, who has written for the American bishops' film office and for the Christophers, a media-oriented Catholic apostolate, suggested that pejorative treatments of Catholicism can be a sort of "backhanded compliment to the Catholic Church." Whereas bigotry in general as a form of persecution is regarded as "a civic sin," in the case of the Catholic Church, "It's okay to throw rocks and sticks at the strong man."

'Da Vinci' combined church imagery with creepiness

In addition to size and photogenic accoutrements, other factors include the Church's counter-cultural status as the largest and most centralized defender of traditional morality on a range of issues from abortion to same-sex marriage; its unyielding resistance to modern sensibilities on matters such as women clergy and contraception; its adamantly hierarchical, authoritative constitution; and—not least—the disastrous mismanagement of the clerical sex abuse crisis.

"There's a broader religious prejudice," said Massa, author of Anti-Catholicism in America, "but it often takes aim at Catholicism, because Catholicism is big. It's an easy target—it's a big barn with a big X on it. Some it is specifically anti-Catholic, but not all of it by any means. A lot of what's perceived as attacks on the Church by secular folks—media, Hollywood, yadda yadda—it's really because Catholicism is the most visibly engaging. … We have statues, we have Roman collars, we have vestments, and a lot of Protestant churches don't."

Hollywood consultant and producer Mark Joseph agrees, saying the industry's portrayal of Catholics is "overwhelmingly negative." "Because Catholicism has all the great visual elements, i.e., vestments, traditional churches, etc., as opposed to evangelical pastors who have no vestments and often worship in nondescript buildings, it sometimes get the brunt of the attack."

Ironically, these same photogenic attributes once helped burnish Rome's big-screen presence. From the silent era through the mid-1960s, positive images of Catholicism abounded in films like Angels with Dirty Faces, Going My Way, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison and Lilies of the Field. So much was this the case that Golden Age Hollywood has been facetiously described as "a Jewish-owned business selling Catholic theology to Protestant America."

An alliance of sorts between mostly Jewish Hollywood moguls and filmmakers of Catholic stock like John Ford, Frank Capra, Leo McCarey, and Alfred Hitchcock was in some ways a natural one. Both represented minority immigrant groups in a Protestant-majority society—but Catholics were also the largest single religious group, and their loyalty and organization made the Church a force to be reckoned with.

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