An Analysis of the Hot Priest Romance Trope
“Here’s to peace… and those who get in the way of it.” —– The Priest, Fleabag
Contains spoilers for all three.
If the past year and a half has been good for anything, it’s been to clarify the difference between needs and wants. We need reliable childcare, vaccines, well-ventilated spaces, a collective effort to beat COVID, more ICU beds, rapid tests. We want distraction, all of this to be over now, to work from home, reassurance that everything will be okay, two goddamned seconds alone, two goddamned seconds not alone. This is at least an improvement over where we were at the beginning of all this, when we needed our government to provide accurate information about the pandemic and we wanted hand sanitizer and yeast.
There is a truism in fiction writing that the best way to create convincing conflict in a story is to ensure that the protagonist’s wants and needs are in direct opposition to one another. A story that manages to resolve both will satisfy the reader; one that resolves one at the expense of another will leave a sense of heartbreak or longing; one that does neither may frustrate the reader but emphasize a larger theme and is probably written by Tana French. In genre fiction, these wants and needs are frequently embodied by other characters, often stereotypes and clichés: the Femme Fatale, the Father Figure, the Shrew, the Final Girl, etc. In romance fiction, one of the most prominent of these is the Hot Priest.
It is important to clarify the terminology here: a Hot Priest is not merely a priest played by someone who is hot. He is a specific romance archetype, a sublimation of forbidden lust for someone contractually obligated to be supportive and affectionate to his entire flock. He represents nothing so much as a safe projection for all kinds of unfulfilled desires that good Catholic women would of course never act on, and a way to translate suppressed needs into concrete and socially acceptable wants. To a certain degree, he gets an automatic hotness boost simply by being openly unavailable. He poses a challenge that carries with it serious consequences and a level of transgression missing from more secular affairs, which he frequently leverages by stringing female parishioners along in various low-level ways. He is, basically, a divine dick.
It helps when he’s played by someone hot, though.
(Looming over this entire essay like Count Orlock’s shadow on the staircase is Father Ralph de Bricassart of The Thorn Birds, which I am not discussing here as the book has not aged well, plus I lack the energy to spend eight hours rewatching the 1983 miniseries. We can all agree that Richard Chamberlain was hot and call it a day.)
Our fictional cup overfloweth with Hot Priests these days: Fleabag, our collective Sopranos rewatch, Midnight Mass, and approximately one million romance novels of various flavors. It’s pretty obvious why: this is what passes for a female power fantasy at a time when we all feel powerless. A thoughtful, erudite man who has taken a solemn vow to remain forever chaste —– but what if he was so overcome by desire that he chose you?? It is not much different than the previous deluge of paranormal romances, which allowed for the refraction of a slew of standard romance elements (lifelong devotion, profound and mysterious sexual attraction, the appeal of the Other, etc.
) in a passionate, obsessive vampire, who has an overwhelming urge to drink human blood —– but what if he was so overcome by desire for you that he could restrain himself (or not)?? Either way, it still comes down to the same thing: the perception of transference of power from a man who has it to a woman who doesn’t through romance and/or sexual attraction. No less an authority than Fleabag’s therapist agrees with me: “Fucking a priest won’t make you feel as powerful as you think it will.”
Noted New Jersey repression expert and devout Catholic Carmela Soprano provided the most incisive recent analysis of this particular archetype when she finally called out Father Phil Intantola for craving the “whiff of sexuality that never goes anywhere… I think you have this M.O. where you manipulate spiritually thirsty women, and I think a lot of it is tied up with food somehow, as well as the sexual tension game.” Father Phil was part of The Sopranos’ first season solely to provide a foil for Carmela that wasn’t going to go anywhere, personal Communion or not. He existed largely for Carmela’s character development —– a rarity for male TV characters —– and emphasized how much of her life had been channeled into safe, suffocatingly acceptable modes of expression: cooking, seemingly deep but ultimately surface-level conversation, and watching Renee Zellweger films.
The usual interpretation is that Carmela is using Father Phil for a surrogate romantic relationship to get the caring and affection that she isn’t getting from Tony, but that isn’t quite right. What Carmela can’t admit to herself until right that minute is that she had been using that whiff of sexuality to get back at Tony in a way that was out in the open and obvious but completely deniable. The audience realizes this back in the pivotal fifth episode of the first season when Carmela calmly tells Tony that Father Phil spent the night. However, Carmela needed to see Jackie Aprile’s watch on Father Phil’s wrist to realize that their relationship isn’t nearly as symbiotic as she thought. When she realizes that Father Phil was stringing her along with his ardent proclamations of “never coming so close to losing my faith,” what she wants (to get back at Tony) and what she needs (to accept what she gains from her marriage) fall out of alignment, and she has to pick one.
Despite being hot, Father Phil is completely out of his depth as a shepherd for this particular flock. When he isn’t openly mooching off mobsters’ wives, he gives Artie Bucco pastoral counseling that’s the exact opposite of what he needs. Tell Charmaine that their restaurant burned down due to internecine Mob conflict? Go to the cops? Where do you think you are, Duluth? Paul Schulze revealed in a recent interview that he based Father Phil’s character on his own father, a Lutheran minister, which is frankly genius. He managed to bring the necessary Protestant smarm and uncomfortable familiarity to what is often a more austere and detached role, resulting in a wonderfully comic character (in a long line of dodgy fictional priests going back to at least Chaucer); nearly all of his scenes with Carmela are played for laughs, with the exception of the Communion/confession scene in “College.”
Carmela does in fact need to confess; she does need someone to tell her that things will be all right. However, she can’t get what she wants from that particular sacrament, through no fault of Father Phil’s. He may be a priest largely for the ancillary benefits, but the real shortcoming in Carmela’s confession is on her end. While the doubts and worries that she expresses about Tony’s actions and their shared life together are real, she isn’t going to get any real absolution from not admitting to much of anything. That’s also the real problem with treating Communion like a sex scene: not because it’s sacrilegious, but because it’s ineffective in achieving its actual goals.
Unlike The Sopranos, Fleabag constructs its title character’s wants in the original, archaic sense of the word as a lack —– a house in want of repair, for want of peace, it wanted twenty ounces to fill —– rather than a desire, and then has her frantically trying to fill those lacks with desires for two seasons. The net result is that she has no time to think about what she needs and a very confused notion of what she wants. There is a very crude joke to be made here about filling holes, but I don’t think Fleabag herself would go there, so I won’t either.
What she really wants is connection with someone other than the audience behind the fourth wall; what she needs is to forgive herself for indirectly driving her dearest friend, business partner, and true soulmate to kill herself, and to learn to live without her mother.
People who want things in the modern sense of the word—–to hanker for something, to wish for something—–are generally considering an additive process of acquisition. They will get something they don’t currently have, but it’s not replacing something that they’ve lost, generally speaking. Put another way: I want Hamish Linklater to record a recitation of Ranier Maria Rilke’s First Duino Elegy; this is not something that has gone missing from my life but is instead something that would add to it. What Fleabag is doing in her various affairs and one-night stands is rather different, and represents more of a patch job for her soul.
Initially, she wants the Priest* because he’s the most inappropriate man to lust after in the room, in addition to being Andrew Scott. He’s just another guy in a long string of emotionally unavailable jerks that she’s not even attracted to and has really unsatisfying sex with anyway, but the twist this time is that she can’t have any kind of sex with him, unsatisfying or otherwise. He also isn’t a jerk, but is instead refreshingly aware that he’s a Hot Priest and doesn’t bother pretending otherwise: “Fuck you, calling me ‘Father’ like it doesn’t turn you on just to say it.” The gulf between him and Father Phil is a lot larger than the Atlantic, and yet he is very definitely a Hot Priest. He knows perfectly well how Fleabag feels about him and puts forth only the most token effort to dissuade her, then promptly hustles her into a confessional.
Unlike Carmela, Fleabag confesses everything, which goes a long way towards supporting the idea of the Sacrament of Penance as a net good, even if it doesn’t usually end with a Hot Priest telling the confessor to kneel. The Priest really is trying to help her, though I’m not sure whether he’d think that using her sexual attraction to him to achieve this goal would seem like such a good idea without the glass(es) of Scotch. Fleabag definitely would never otherwise have come to the realization that what she is really missing in her life is Boo and her mother, the people who told her what to do, what to wear, what bands to like, and how to live her life.
That’s what parents do, and friends, and yes, sometimes lovers, but not this guy.
(It is also pretty rich to hear the character who got fifty million women to buy inadvisable jumpsuits say that she wants to be told what to wear, but these are the limited benefits allotted to those of us who are late to the Fleabag party.)
For this guy, what he wants (Fleabag) and what he needs (to be a priest) are in opposition because he is a genuinely good priest, even if he could probably stand to drink less. This is the pretty standard Hot Priest trope, but it’s given extra weight here in the context of loss and lack. While Fleabag would gain something from a relationship, even an illicit one (“Priests have sex all the time! I read about it!”) he would lose something integral to his own being. Unlike those million romance novels, Fleabag doesn’t frame this loss as a hot subjugation of a powerful man, but instead the personal tragedy that it would actually be for him. Ultimately, Fleabag reinforces the trope even while seemingly undermining it: he stays unattainable even after she attains him, which is quite a trick.
What Fleabag gains is what has been missing in her life: self-awareness; self-forgiveness; good sex with someone she actually likes in private, not with us watching; the clarity of mind to walk away before what she wants becomes what she needs. The Priest, for his part, is able to do the math on what he wants and what he needs and come out ahead.
Midnight Mass’ Father Paul Hill could definitely stand to watch Fleabag. The Sopranos, not so much; I don’t think he needs any more examples of moral flexibility.
However, Father Paul is not, by definition, a Hot Priest. (This is not meant in any way to disparage Hamish Linklater, who is objectively plenty attractive.) Rather, Father Paul is the Platonic ideal that Hot Priests are weaponizing in their efforts to manipulate and feed off of in acts of emotional vampirism. He is an achingly sincere, slightly dorky, and genuinely decent person completely committed to his flock. Hot Priests are hot largely because they are unattainable, which in turn usually translates to behavior that is both suave and arms-length. They do not have any of Father Paul’s open-heart nakedness or occasional clumsiness—–that slight stammer!—–which in their hands would be a cynical ploy to draw someone in, but for him is another neon sign of his lack of artifice.
In the scenes where his personal magnetism starts messing with the Earth’s polarity, it is less because he is handsome and far more the attention and concern that he brings to every interaction, no matter who it’s with, whether a total fuckup parolee, the town drunk, or a young disabled woman. His total focus on anyone who needs help and the absolute dedication that he brings to trying to solve problems are what make him so appealing, even as they get nearly everyone on Crockett Island killed.
Even the sketchiest aspects of Father Paul’s character are still impossibly sweet, naïve, and romantic: yes, he broke his vows, but with one woman who he truly loves, and who he spent decades longing after! There was a lot more than a whiff of sexuality there, and it definitely went somewhere. He brought a font of unholy blood to the island, but because he wants to save the love of his life and their daughter! He wants to have a second chance! He wants a life where he can be both a man of God and also a family man! (What he needs is to forgive himself for being only human with Millie; trouble is, he isn’t human anymore.) Compare this to Father Phil, who doesn’t covet his parishioner’s wife so much as he covets his home entertainment system, or Fleabag’s Priest, who is perfectly happy to use a confessional as an admittedly very hot seduction prop. Father Paul would never.
And yet: Bev exists, and the way she acts in regards to the absent Monsignor suggests some kind of power dynamic not too far off from the one filmed in St. Rita’s Roman Catholic Church. This is not to suggest that she had any kind of inappropriate relationship with the Rev. Msgr. John Pruitt. Father Paul is terrible at hiding how he feels about Millie and surely wouldn’t be any better with anyone else; Bev would need to excavate at least a dozen layers of repression to even acknowledge what she wants, much less what she needs. It’s more that Bev managed to insinuate herself into St. Patrick’s power structure by running Monsignor’s life and basking in his refracted saintliness, at least in her own mind. In reality, everyone loves Monsignor; nobody loves Bev. Even Father Paul is initially guarded and wary around her, though that’s possibly because she treats him like some young idiot who’s so green, he doesn’t even know what color chasuble to wear. The second he starts to have health issues, she swoops in to set up a community dinner and restart the same process all over again. Now, though, there’s an actual miracle; two more and there’s a canonization to crow over.
Bev is what happens when the Hot Priest role is filled by someone too decent to exploit it but too invested in the good qualities of other people to anticipate what may go wrong. She’s also what happens when someone exists in a power structure that encourages people to squash what they want and need and pretend to focus on others instead. One could make an argument that her role embodies the conservative position that women shouldn’t be allowed in the priesthood or have any meaningful role in the Catholic Church beyond being worshippers. I do not for a minute think Midnight Mass is actually suggesting this, and yet it wouldn’t be a hard argument to make. The real reason that Bev shouldn’t be a priest is not that she’s a woman; it’s because she’s much too willing to cover up awful things in the interests of getting what she personally wants.
One of the things that Bev wants, ironically, involves mixing up some Evangelical or Pentecostal elements into what is normally a rather old-fashioned Catholic service. Much as Schulze got his Lutheranism into The Sopranos’ Catholicism, Father Paul’s Good Friday homily veers abruptly into something a lot closer to a televangelist’s rant, complete with slightly harsher lighting and filmed at a lower angle. His hair is definitely closer to God. The net result is jarring and queasy even before he begins to speak about the congregation becoming an Army of God, and for my money, it was far and away the scariest scene in the entire show. Forget the blood drinking and the casual disregard for Joe’s life—–that was the point at which it became irrevocably clear that Father Paul had changed into something completely unredeemable and wanted to take everyone else with him, aided and abetted by Bev. It wouldn’t have been half as frightening if we hadn’t seen how caring he was earlier—–and how caring he is later, at least with Millie and Sarah.
Ultimately, the fact that the good and decent Hot Priest gets nearly everyone in his congregation killed, the mostly-decent Hot Priest had to give up a genuine connection with a woman he loved, and the smarmy jerk Hot Priest continued to lead a life of free ziti and Lillet is less an indictment of the trope and more a reflection of their stories’ very different genres. Each show uses different aspects of the trope for its own ends, and what each criticizes has more to do with the very real power structures that exist rather than the fictional characters who inhabit them. All those romance novels are still subverting deeply frustrating and frequently destructive institutions, even as these stories mostly exist, as Rilke put it, “to stop being what one was in endlessly anxious hands.”
I do not want to be rid of any of these troublesome priests, not even Father Phil, who I sincerely hope enjoyed Judy. What we lack in our lives that keeps us coming back to them is another story entirely. The Sopranos and Midnight Mass both question the need to place that much power in one person’s hands; Fleabag asks what might happen if someone considerate held that power and recognized its potential for abuse (however much we might like it). We want to see clerical overreach thwarted and cut down to size, but we also need to believe that there are good people selflessly devoted to helping others, even in an institution that has been failing miserably in that regard for decades now. I suspect the fictional seminaries will be full for some time to come.
*For clarity, I will refer to Fleabag’s priest character by his billing, The Priest, rather than the nickname of “Hot Priest” given to him by legions of besotted Fleabag fans.
