President Bartlet

Part of the genius of the President Bartlet character is that while he is a staunch Catholic, he apparently has the Bible memorized - therein appeasing old school, religion-should-be-scary Catholics as well as people throughout the country who think the mark of man's character is how well he knows his Bible. He's an intellectual New England elitist, but also loves him some Jesus.

Back when I was a super-Catholic young buck, or as close as you could be in my hometown (Catholic, not young buck), it seemed as if the Bible didn't have a big part in our Mass. Or a part at all - in fact, I always thought of Catholicism as being ABOVE something like the Bible - ours was a more serious, gloomy liturgy; who had time for reading pretend stories about boats with animals and pillars of salt and other nonsense? To this day anytime I meet someone who quotes the Bible I think "Hmmm...Biblethumper" which is Xmas-code for "Baptist."

I'll always think my grandfather said it best when he said "things were better when Mass was in Latin - we didn't know what the hell they were saying and it scared the shit out of us." He also tried to convince us we were related to Klinger from MASH, so. XMAS Church memories HERE and HERE.