The New (& the Old) Evangelization The Church and the Cinema: What used to be

Jul 8, 2011

The historic role the Catholic Church has played over the centuries in favor of freedom is that she mediated between the state and the citizen. By her moral influence, she restrained the overreaching power of civil authority from encroaching on the rights of citizens and those who could not defend themselves. With the same moral authority, the Church exercised a commanding influence on Hollywood during the twentieth century. The Legion of Decency, founded in 1933 by Archbishop of Cincinnati John T. McNicholas, was an organization behind this influence by opposing immoral or irreverent content.

In fact, Pope Pius XI in 1936, in his encyclical “On the Cinema,” commended the U.S. Bishops for holding, not only Hollywood, but Catholics to account with regard to watching objectionable movies. He wrote, “Your leadership called forth the prompt and devoted loyalty of your faithful people, and millions of American Catholics signed the pledge of the ‘Legion of Decency’ binding themselves not to attend any motion picture which was offensive to Catholic moral principles or proper standards of living.” It was even requested by the U.S. Bishops on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1938 that the pledge be taken by the faithful. The pledge was administered on an annual basis for several years.

It reads as follows: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. I condemn all indecent and immoral motion pictures, and those which glorify crime or criminals. I promise to do all that I can to strengthen public opinion against the production of indecent and immoral films, and to unite with all who protest against them. I acknowledge my obligation to form a right conscience about pictures that are dangerous to my moral life. I pledge myself to remain away from them. I promise, further, to stay away altogether from places of amusement which show them as a matter of policy.”

Pope Pius XI went on to say in his encyclical that it is the duty of the bishops of the entire Catholic world “to unite in vigilance over this universal and potent form of entertainment and instruction … combating whatever contributes to the lessening of the people's sense of decency and of honor.” Standing as a “sign of contradiction,” the Church was instrumental in tempering the lewd and violent content which would characterize movies in the latter part of the twentieth century. The leaders of the Church, including the Pope, found it necessary to take Hollywood to task when circumstances required it.

The hierarchy of the Church understood well the powerful influence of the cinema. As Pius XI said, “There does not exist today a means of influencing the masses more potent than the cinema…[it] teaches the majority of men more effectively than abstract reasoning…” In other words, more than education itself, movies and eventually television would, with great success, form minds and hearts; as such, it would play a decisive role in shaping a nation’s character.

What might surprise many today is that this vigilance exercised by the Legion of Decency and their willingness to hold film makers to account actually worked! From the late 1930s to the mid 1960s, Hollywood produced many films favorable to the Catholic Faith. What is more, the glorification of sexual promiscuity, alternative families and violence were kept to a minimum. But with the dissolution of the Legion in the mid-sixties (officially ending in the 1970s), and without the check and balance it provided, Hollywood’s departure from Christian values was rapid and decisive. Movies began to promote, like never before, the values of the Sexual Revolution. To make a long story short, it followed that the culture of Hollywood helped advance, to a great extent, the Culture of Death. In the meantime, the Church’s influence over society had begun decline.

No doubt, the Catholic approach to modern day problems needs to involve a positive and affirmative approach when warranted. But to rely exclusively on a positive and affirmative approach not only has failed to produce favorable results, but more importantly, it is a significant departure from the example set by Christ, the Apostles, the Church Fathers and the Saints. The effective proclamation of the Gospel for centuries affirmed the good and opposed evil. As for the latter, St. Simeon prophesied that Jesus would be a “Sign of Contradiction,” causing many to rise and many to fall. Our Lord would later say that his disciples are not above their Master. Indeed, if the world hated him for opposing its ways then they would hate his disciples for doing the same.

Just when Hollywood needed the guidance and reproof the most (beginning in the late 1960s), Catholics deemed it necessary to drop their traditional safeguards against the forces of evil; two of which were the vigilance and scrutiny the U.S. bishops exercised with film-making and the pledge against immoral movies recited by Catholics. There is an important lesson in this for the Church: The preaching of the Gospel and saving souls involves a kind of exorcism of evil. We cannot bring about the former without the latter. As St. Paul said to the Christians in Corinth, “we are an aroma of Christ for those who are being saved and an odor of death for those who are perishing.”