Interestingly, Sean Connery was both a Catholic (as Bond, or at least his family, is implied to be) and a Rangers supporter. So if you’re looking for an easy win, you could tie that in. People often transplant bits of his identity onto Bond. But Connery came from a much less wealthy background and tbh, I don’t think Bond himself is into football. I reckon he watches it idly if it’s on at a pub or whatever, but he’s more of a rugby/cricket man (all that living in huge estates and going to public school).
Bond’s occasional Scottishness in the books and films is interesting to me. At least in the Craig films, I think he left Scotland behind identity-wise when his parents died and never looked back. It just seems like a massive wound, which that psychologist prodded at in Skyfall really successfully.
When I first seen this I was, admittedly, very sleepy and experienced a brief moment of feeling like I'd somehow wondered into the priest's side of a confession until I remembered that I'd finally given in and thrown that post in the queue
Now to be fair, that was a joke. And one that was written ??? months ago that I was too embarrassed to post until now. But I am doing a couple of things in that post that are interesting now i'm looking at it in the cold light of day:
I'm semi-deliberately conflating my Bonds (I always forget craig!Bond has quite a different backstory from novel!Bond). in the post I'm mostly leaning on the latter
I'm drawing quite heavy on cultural and fanon understandings(?) of Bond (i.e. he is motivated by Queen, Country, England) However in the books (at least the first 6 which I've read, maybe there's a step change later) it's not something he really bangs on about. He's mostly loyal and devoted to M. (which is maybe intended as a metaphor for England but I and others have ~thoughts~). It's more present in the craig films. Vesper has a line about "protecting queen and country", (more discussion of that particular scene below), in the word association scene in skyfall he does respond to "country" with "England" and later he has that line "Don't forget my pathetic love of country", and Mallory talks a bit about country in NTTD. But overall that's not a lot and the entire two times it comes from Bond it's sort of sarky? Therefore I do find the prevalence of "Queen and Country" in fanfic interesting, especially having come at this fandom sort of backwards (see the boffin post and incorrigible post) then finding myself writing it then going back to the source material and figuring out that it is mostly fanon/ cultural (mis)understanding, and having to decide what to do about that in my own works. someone else will have to weigh in on the classic films, I'm working my way through but I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on this specifically.
To address the actual ask, (Caveat that I am neither scottish (I just live here) nor catholic. there is a scottish catholic in the house but by way of london and she's completely hopeless at catholicism questions.) I was very much like ??? wtf do you mean he's Catholic coded (also what do you mean Sean Connery was a catholic rangers supporter??? edit: wait I looked into this and he grew up a celtic fan then switched to rangers bc he befriended the chairman?? that both makes more sense and also is soo weird...) but yeah the priest hole in skyfall and various other things see this reddit thread and which also points to there being a Scottish Catholic family called Bond where his family motto "the world is not enough" comes from. I also found some more discussion in this article on a weird christian (?? I think) website.
The priest hole bit is interesting but it seems to be making a big assumption that his family would have owned skyfall lodge since the 16th century, which isn't totally implausible but they weren't building these hideaways for no reason and if large swathes of the population and establishment were in the business of persecuting catholics the probability of that home having changed hands at some point in the preceeding 500 years (already quite high!) are probably increased.
I think a lot of the Scottish stuff like this comes down to non Scottish media producers (fleming, filmmakers) sort of throwing stuff in without really knowing or thinking about what they're doing all that much. So the priest hole therefore catholic feels like bit of a watsonian explanation for a doylistic problem. IMO the priest hole was almost certainly thrown in as a pure plot device without thinking about the immies. Especially since I would argue that his scottishness was reconned in not once (Ian Fleming liking Sean Connery's performance so choosing to make him Scottish many books in, when he's specifically called English in earlier books) but twice (how does craig!Bond's family owning a 16th century or older hunting lodge in the Scottish highlands square with Vesper's cold read of him in casino royale? Possibly she was just completely wrong and he was always a posh boy see this hb00q post + my additional tags. How does Bond being scottish relate to him answering "country" with "england" earlier in the film? You point at a potential read in the ask but again I'm like, this feels doylist-un-thought-though to me). Not to say that it's not fun or interesting to think about or put into fanworks! I just don't find the Catholicism thing specifically that compelling. I think especially book!Bond makes more sense to me as a lapsed and disinterested member of the Church of Scotland (which is Presbyterian and should not be equated or confused with the church of England which is Anglican. I'm sure I don't need to tell yous this but I have seen people conflating them before).
As a sort of wider point I was talking to @milesmesservy the other day and he said it's better to think of the Bond media in general as a "modern mythology" (then immediately after he made a... much less poetic analogy) as trying to think of it as one canon, or even a series of canons for each era, with internal continuity is a fool's errand and path to madness (I have SO many examples of this from writing Love, Honour, Obey (E, 7k). the fucking. coloured light above M.'s door nearly sent me to a padded room)
RE: the football piece, I go back and forth. @milesmesservy has a post about cricket which I weighed in on here and I have thought about rugby in the past (and if he went to Eton he'd have been playing their stupid field game) but plenty of posh people do also like football (I point to Chelsea) and novel!Bond is tall but not big and muscly and craig!Bond is not exactly rugby shaped. He could be a fly half(?) or one of the other wee-er positions but I could also see him playing and liking football (though I could also see him just having a distaste for team sports in general, I'm not particularly wedded to one idea). but yeah if he likes it I don't think he's any kind of ultra or anything. He just vaguely keeps up enough to hold a casual conversation.
