Only about 1% of Greece is Catholic, yet Blatty chose to make Father Karras a first-generation Greek-American. Does anyone have a specific notion of why this might have been? Has Blatty ever discussed it? To that matter, the surname Merrin is Anglo-Saxon, yet Father Merrin does not sound like he's from the British Isles. So, what gives? Was Blatty just subverting the viewer's/reader's expectations by not landing on the more typical Irish-, Italian-, Polish-American, etc. Catholic?
shareWell, Father Karras could just happen to be part of those 1% Greeks who are Catholic. It says in the book that Georgetown was a heavily Catholic area. So one theory is that Karras family might have converted to fit in. It's never explained in depth more than that in the book, for what I know.
Father Merrin was supposedly born in the Netherlands with a Dutch father and English mother; although, this could have been written later for damage control as to why he doesn't have a British dialect in the movie, I guess. He was probably a Jesuit convert, as was Tolkien.
Well, sure he could have been part of the 1%. I guess I was wondering if Blatty had ever commented on it. Who knows, maybe he had a friend or a professor who was.
shareWilliam Blatty was a catholic and a georgetown grad. I don't recall Father Karras' biography or or it was mentioned in the book (I read it nearly 50 years ago) but he could have converted to Roman Catholicism.
shareBlatty said that he didn't want Carras to look like a witch Doctor a Shaman.Orthodox priests tend to look like that to Westerners with their long beards and hair he wanted Carras to be as rationalistic as possible.I think Merrin was more appropriate to look like a witch doctor and not Carras Merrin should've been Greek Orthodox IMO and Carras should've been Italian or something not Greek I think Blatty was confused and said fuck it let's make him a Greek Catholic that even though it is very rare Greek Catholics exist in the island of Syros
shareI doubt that Blatty ever had a Greek Orthodox priest in mind as a protagonist. As was said, Blatty was a believing Catholic with strong ties to Georgetown and the Jesuits. I grew up Catholic on the East Coast - Catholic grade school, high school and college. Most - not all - of the last names I encountered were Irish, Italian, Polish and German. Not too many French, Spanish or Portuguese, though those countries were traditionally Catholic too. And sure there are outliers - converts, etc. Scottish, English, African Catholics in smaller numbers, not to mention most of Latin America. Given that, it just seemed unusual to me that Blatty chose to highlight somebody from such a homogenous, non-Catholic religious tradition. As a Greek Catholic, Karras would have been an outlier to some degree and maybe that appealed to Blatty. I don't think the average non-Catholic would have even clocked anything unusual about it. I don't think I did myself until years after I first saw it. Yes, I'm sure there are at least a few Catholics from every nation on Earth. I just wondered if Blatty ever remarked on his somewhat unusual choice.
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