Needs Help: Raised Catholic

According to the Laconic page, Raised Catholic is about a character being non-religious, but expressing characteristics of the faith they were created with in their lives, and the description says it is not restricted to catholics. However, possibily due to its vague title, the trope is frequently used for characters who simply happen to be catholic or at least express cultural catholic practices, either currently or in the past, both of which are on themselves People Sit on Chairs, and the description only enforces it by focusing on catholicism. There are other problems in my opinion, like treating catholic faith as if it were something foreign and strict in an American point of view, but I think the problem with misuse is the most notable and objective. This Ask The Tropers thread talks about the possible Americentrism in the trope.

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Raised Catholic Wick Check:

As it is shown, over half of the examples treat the trope as a synonym for what the title implies, it is, a character who happened to be raised as a catholic.

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Solutions: The best I can see right now is renaming the trope to something similar to "Culturally Religious" to emphasize it is not just about characters being raised as catholic, but I'm unsure of how tropeable this whole concept is at all. Apparently the trope was named "Good Catholic" before, which means it most likely had already had some problems in the past over its definition.

Edited by good-morning on Feb 4th 2022 at 1:48:09 PM

oh hey how are you doing?

Opening

Macron's notes

The name is definitely vague. I think renaming it to something like Religiously-Raised Agnostic gets the point across more. Anything that just amounts to "X person is from a religious family" and nothing more should be cut.

Catholic myself, so not biased :P.

But the trope needs a rename, and I think your "Culturally Religious" one works fine.

"Grandmaster Combat, son!"

I'm a catholic myself too, and I liked both Culturally Religious and Religiously Raised Agnostic. Do you think the redirect should go too?

Edited by good-morning on Feb 3rd 2022 at 5:05:12 PM

oh hey how are you doing?

I think a rename is needed here. Maybe Secularly Religious would work as well.

Edit: Or Irreligiously Religious.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 3rd 2022 at 2:14:38 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

I'm good with a rename. As discussed way back on ATT, I understand why it was named this, but it definitely obscures the point.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I know that someone happening to be Catholic is People Sit on Chairs, but is there a trope that has to do with someone being a devout Catholic that heavily influences their characterization and personality attributes, especially in contrast to other characters who are non-religious? I always thought that this trope was about that.

Edited by MatthewWayne on Feb 3rd 2022 at 12:44:33 PM

Trust no one.

It's not this trope. Ask on Trope Finder if you want help finding the right trope.

Edit: If we have it. The Trope Launch Pad would be the place to go if it turns out we don't have it.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 3rd 2022 at 2:59:19 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

That, or you could just try your luck in the TLP. I'm sure there'll be a bunch of examples to collect from wick cleaning.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

The Fundamentalist, maybe?

Edited by good-morning on Feb 3rd 2022 at 6:05:19 AM

oh hey how are you doing?

Jane the Virgin would be an example of what Matthew's talking about. The protagonist and her grandmother are devout Catholics, which is why Jane is a goody-two-shoes virgin at 23.

Yeah, that's more what I was thinking of. The Fundamentalist is technically accurate to my idea, but it's more negative than what I was going for.

Now that I think of it, I think I'm imagining something akin to Real Men Love Jesus, except in this case it's not necessarily related to being a badass. I'm a little reluctant to try a TLP, because I have no idea how to even do one of those, or if it would even be worth it.

Trust no one.

I think this discussion indicates there is a confusion about the trope and that Raised Catholic may have gotten mixed up with catholic stereotypes of the United States. Do you think that, if we rename it, the older name should be disambiguated between other tropes then? There might be missing sister or super-tropes

Edited by good-morning on Feb 3rd 2022 at 7:04:16 AM

oh hey how are you doing?

Disambiguating after renaming sounds like a good idea.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

to disambig, with the tentative name Secularly Religious.

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Rereading the ATT, I don't understand the need to limit anything to the US. I'm also from a very-Catholic-due-to-colonization country and self-identify as lapsed, but precisely because Catholicism so common, a Filipino person who was raised a step above the everyday/"lay" Catholic would definitely be perceived as having a stricter and more conservative lifestyle.

Both "the Catholic person who is way more religious than everybody else to the point of occasional uncomfortability" and "the person who was raised Catholic but is now uncomfortable with the religion" are definitely both global things. Conversely, the stereotypical American religious person is more likely to be Protestant or Baptist; it was a whole thing that Biden is only the second Catholic US President. I'm not aware of any Catholic stereotypes that are specific to the USA.

But that's a digression and a job for TLP, if any. Re: Jane, I think that type of example would be best broadened anyway to some broader "religious culture clash/personal conflict vs. a more secular cast" trope, including stuff like diet/Hinduism etc.

+1 to a rename, though I'm not 100% on board with any of the proposed names so far. Secularly Religious is unclear for its purpose (it doesn't clarify that the person was raised religious). Religiously Raised Agnostic sounds like it's limiting itself to confirmed agnostics, and the requirement that they continue to express aspects of their upbringing doesn't come across. Culturally Religious would be my pick for now though it still feels a bit lacking.

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(Not doubleposting as not to derail.)

Not arguing the stereotype's existence, but am arguing against limiting to the US and Canada (besides baseline Americentrism on this wiki). Hell, I've known Vietnamese Catholics who went through that. Really traditional Catholic upbringing being restrictive is pretty universal; my opening paragraph was to draw a distinction between Catholics who were raised strictly/traditionally and 'lay' Catholics in a predominantly Christian/Catholic country.

Edited by Synchronicity on Feb 4th 2022 at 1:59:23 PM

The American standpoint definitely comes from the fact that, even though Catholics are a minority, they're just generally stereotyped here as being stricter and more isolated, considering the prevalence of Catholic Schools and the like. It's a stereotype that pops up in works like Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young", and the "raised Catholic, now isn't" thing stems from the niche of people who grew up in a strict Catholic family and going to strict Catholic schools but ended up being way more rebellious than they were allowed to be, especially if they're LGBT. It's a very specific flavor of religious fundamentalism and ex-religious background that seems very American/Canadian.

But, obviously that stereotype doesn't exist everywhere, or does exist but isn't all that noteworthy. Some people at the ATT thread even argued the opposite, that the stereotype had nothing to do with religion and was more community-based. So it's definitely regional.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

It’s worth noting that religion as a whole is very fluid. I am Lutheran, I attend church and believe in God, etc. but my actual beliefs, not just a general way I live my life, lean agnostic—while I believe in God I don’t claim to know with certainty whether or not He exists. Indeed, I was raised Lutheran, but my family are very tolerant and allowed me to pick my path in life. Furthermore, I am politically left-wing—I am pro-LGBT, pro-choice, socialist, I even believe in evolution and the Big Bang. There isn’t really a strict black or white view of it.

Someone can be any number of shades of religious or non religious, from fundamentalist to atheist and the whole shades of in between. If this trope is specifically about straight Catholic-to-nonreligious it might be too strict. I’m sure there’s media with characters who don’t fit a strict A-to-B path.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Feb 4th 2022 at 3:17:21 PM

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Oh, well, yeah, of course. I was actually baptized Catholic myself, but my family is very unreligious and I'm an Atheist. My point wasn't to say it's a black and white system, but to explain the stereotype in the way I think the trope was modeled after.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

The point I was making was that this trope name might be too strict. I understand, Jay, I wasn’t offended at all. I was just saying that this trope is too restrictive for a very gray concept.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Feb 4th 2022 at 3:28:21 PM

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Well, media do be like that. It's simplified because works simplify it.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I get that, I just meant the name might be more restrictive than the trope. The trope doesn’t say that it has to be that way, but the name does.

Man so many TRS threads have started because of bad trope names. If only TLP had been better about ensuring clear, descriptive names in the old days. Ah well, we can do what we can do.

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TLP wasn't even mandatory back in the day. You can't enforce something if everyone can just bypass it. Judging from the lack of a link on the discussion tab, this is one that was just created out of thin air one day.

Anyway, I think we're all in agreement that the name is bad and should feel bad.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 4th 2022 at 3:38:28 PM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Oh no I know this site was the wild west back then. That's why our backlog is so big.

Anyway as I said before to a rename + disambig.

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