crawthumper (plural crawthumpers)
The term suggests that the person is always beating (thumping) their chest (craw) a gesture of piety and submission. It also implies an extreme obsequiousness towards the Catholic Church, priests, monseignours, and especially junior bishops. A crawthumper will know every gradation of the clergy, from curate to pope, supplicant to reverend mother and the correct form of address in canon law. Derogatory, though commonly used by Irish catholics to describe other, more openly pious catholics, the term has an anticlerical tinge.