I saw the movie Spectre recently. It had the fascinating exchange:
Madeleine Swann: Why, given every other possible option, does a man choose the life of a paid assassin?
James Bond: Well, it was that or the priesthood.
Connections have been made with films before. Men in black – Protecting the Earth from the scum of the Universe is an obvious trope. Even alluded to by the Orthodox.
Here’s my good Camino Companion Fr Bart (on twitter here):
And then many twitter followers will be familiar with
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The priesthood is so closely enmeshed in the fabric of Western cultural memory that it’s only the mundanely religious who ever seriously suggest that what we need is to dilute those iconic associations. The world is really just waiting for priests to live up to their legend.
The spy-assassin and the priest (like the habited religious) both stand as signs to discomfit the conventionally respectable. We prefer not to be reminded that some kinds of enemies can be defeated only by extreme means, whether garrote wire or prayer and fasting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Service
Awesome!