Something sacred: Hollywood's new men in black.

Screenwriters and viewers alike are intrigued with priests not because of what they do, but what they won't do, says culture columnist Patrick McCormick. And he's not just talking about celibacy.

Driving home from work last Thursday night I spotted a small band of protesters on the darkened sidewalk outside the local ABC affiliate; the lead marcher was carrying the sort of silky tasseled banner one used to see at the head of a Marian procession. At the light I stopped to look back, puzzled. Then it hit me: "Nothing Sacred" was on. And these folks were voicing their opposition to what they saw as the shoddy and biased portrayal of priests and sisters in the new--and struggling--TV drama about the trials and tribulations of an inner-city rectory.

Ironically, an episode just the previous week had shown Father Ray (the show's central figure) throwing a TV news crew out of his church for trying to produce its biased portrayal of a priest. In life and art, it seems, Catholics are rather particular about the stories people tell about priests.

In spite (or because) of these strong feelings, Catholics and storytellers continue to be fascinated by tales of priests, whether salutary or salacious. From Chaucer's The Nun's Priest's Tale (can you imagine the reaction to that movie of the week?) to Antonia Bird's 1995 controversial film "Priest," Catholic clergy have been a pet subject of poets, dramatists, and playwrights.

If priests haven't been as popular on the silver or TV screen as doctors, lawyers, or cops, they've gotten a lot more airtime than their Protestant or Jewish colleagues.

Sometimes the treatment of priests has been pretty flattering, falling just short of hagiography. In the '30s and '40s--when all Hollywood priests were two-fisted Irishmen--Spencer Tracy, Pat O'Brien, and Bing Crosby portrayed the original "men in black" as tough but gentle clerics whose piety was matched with ample measures of guts and grace.

In "Angels With Dirty Faces" (1938), "Boys Town" (1938), "The Fighting 69th" (1940), "Going My Way" (1944), "The Bells of St. Mary's" (1945), and "Fighting Father Dunne" (1948), tinsel town provided a generation of diocesan recruiters with all the vocation poster boys they would ever need. Here were guys as comfortable in the boxing ring as they were in the sacristy.

Humphrey Bogart showed us in "Brother Orchid" (1940) and "The Left Hand of God" (1955) that the priesthood was a wonderful institution--and even when bad guys just dressed up as priests they were magically transformed into noble and selfless men.

But not all Hollywood priests have been saints. Often enough we've been treated to the sexual struggles, temptations, and sweet surrender of a hunky--and fallen--"Father-What-a-Waste." Richard Chamberlain (Father, then Monsignor, then Cardinal Ralph) plays this role in Colleen McCullough's hugely popular book-made-movie, "The Thorn Birds." And in "Monsignor" (1982), Christopher Reeve shows us that he was not wearing his Superman tights under the cassock he just couldn't seem to keep on.

Tom Berenger gave us yet another forgettable example of this genre in "Last Rites" (1988), and Andrew Greeley's earlier novels left one wondering if there were any homely or celibate priests left in America. More recently, in films like "The Boys of St. Vincent" (1994), we've been treated to darker stories of sexual abuse and betrayal, all the more frightening and upsetting because of its realism.

However Hollywood has produced thoughtful and complex stories about the lives of priests. In "True Confessions" (1981), Robert De Niro portrays a talented and ambitious priest struggling with his own arrogance, while in "The Mission" (1986), De Niro and Jeremy Irons are two 18th-century Jesuits wrestling with their own demons and with their participation in the larger colonial destruction of indigenous peoples. And "Romero" (1989) offers us a painstaking picture of the conservative seminary priest who became El Salvador's archbishop and a martyr in the struggle for justice. Like the priestly characters in the novels of Graham Greene (The Power and the Glory) and Edwin O'Connor (The Edge of Sadness), the men in these stories struggle with the limits of their humanity and the frailties of their faith. Lacking the certitude or assurance of Crosby, O'Brien, and Tracy's "church triumphant," they make their way through the darkness and doubts of their middle years, practicing a faith that is more trust than conviction.

Maybe that's why one of my favorites among all the the Hollywood and TV priests is M.A.S.H.'s Father Mulcahey. Often drawn in an unflattering and comic light, Mulcahey was a man who had to face the incoming flood of wounded and dying without any of the tools available to Hawkeye and the other surgeons. More than any other character in that long-running series, the smiling little Irishman was forced to come to grips with the ongoing experience of limits, loss, and powerlessness: trying to make sense of experiences that shattered others' faith while continuing to minister to his highly irregular flock.

It's also why I find the three priests in "Nothing Sacred" rather refreshing. In spite of TV's preference for stereotypes, the residents of St. Thomas' rectory are drawn with an impressive richness and complexity. The 30-something social-worker pastor, Father Ray, is cute enough to be a Father What-a-Waste, but spends as much time struggling with a dryness in his prayer life as he does wrestling with the remains of a preordination affair.

Older Father Leo comes across as someone a good deal more interesting than the surly Barry Fitzgeraldish, Father Crotchety expected from Hollywood's senior clergy. Here is an older priest struggling with his own "empty nave" syndrome, trying to maintain his faith in spite of dwindling vocations and Mass attendance.

Even the newly ordained and rather conservative Father Eric tries to make sense of a priesthood that is both less and more than he had hoped. Not the poster boy priests of the past but men interesting enough to make us think about our faith--and on prime time.

In a visual media, Roman collars and black cassocks provide an easy shorthand for "religion," often relieving screenwriters of the more challenging task of writing something intelligent or thoughtful about this dimension of our lives. When a story line calls for some religious atmosphere, the prop department usually fetches a crucifix, a set of rosary beads, and a gaggle of '50s nuns in full habit.

We are a sacramental faith, and even if Hollywood grossly misunderstands and oversimplifies many of our symbols, its writers and producers clearly get the fact that signs have power.

Beyond the visual, however, priests have been popular with Hollywood because of the things they will not do. The dramatic tension created by characters who are not supposed to have sex, break the confessional seal, or take a human life has appealed to many a director. As often as we've seen stories about the struggles of handsome celibates, there have also been dozens of films and hundreds of TV episodes centered around the dilemma of a priest who has heard the Confession of a murderer or would-be assassin. Alfred Hitchcock used this plot line in "I Confess" (1953), and this fall it turned up on episodes of the TV shows "Law and Order" and "Michael Hayes."

But the treatment of priests in many of these stories--and not just the ones about sexual temptations--is simplistic and silly. Never have I met any priest who provides absolution before the fact, nor heard of people confessing acts they hadn't yet committed.

I, too, am intrigued by the notion that Catholic priests are so often portrayed as people who won't cross some moral line in the sand, no matter what the consequences. It's fascinating that Hollywood priests are seen as representatives of an objective moral order that applies in even the most difficult situations. And even more amazing, they are occasionally portrayed as being right.

What makes this so surprising is that in American popular culture we long ago resolved any tension between conscience and authority by dismissing authority completely. In films and TV programs, following the boss' orders isn't just unpopular, it's anathema. And why not? After all, our bosses and superior officers are almost always portrayed as idiots and dolts. Representatives of our social institutions generally come across as corrupt or incompetent. And so when working out knotty moral problems, our TV and Hollywood heroes are largely left to their own devices.

How curious it is, then, that priests should so often be introduced into stories because they threaten the assumptions of moral individualism. It seems that priests' attention to the moral authority of the magisterium--or some objective moral order in the universe--challenges the notion that we can learn everything we need to know about a situation by listening to our own consciences.

Priests are presented as folks who must hold authority and conscience in tension, who cannot let themselves off the hook. Priests are presented as folks who know they don't have the last word on morality, and who know they need to attend to something larger, older, and richer than themselves. It doesn't seem like a bad way to tell a priest's story.

In the end, though, the best stories about priests may not be the ones that show them as moral guides, but the tales that take their humanity and faith with equal seriousness.

The Latin term for priest is pontifex, "a bridge"; and the notion of priesthood (of the ordained and the baptized) points to our attempts to build a bridge between the holy and the daily, to find the sacred in the midst of our humanity. Priesthood is never a flight from what it means to be human. Instead, it's supposed to be-like Christ's incarnation--a journey into the heart of our humanity, a journey made possible by our faith and God's grace.

When shows like "Nothing Sacred" offer us priests and sisters who wear their humanity and their faith on their sleeves the way an old priest wears his lunch on his cassock, they are not telling us that nothing is sacred, but that everything is.

By Patrick McCormick, an assistant professor of ethics at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.