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Greeley reviews "Sin With Smoke and Mirrors: Sin and Censorship: The Catholic Church and the Motion Picture Industry" by Frank Walsh.

In a book which demonstrates both enormous and careful research and almost superhuman restraint, Frank Walsh tells the story of the stranglehold the Catholic Church in the United States applied to the motion picture industry in the United States during twenty years from the middle thirties to the middle fifties. He also describes the symbiosis between the Church and the industry. In front of the text of his story is the implication, which Walsh quite properly does not develop, that the Church did it all with smoke and mirrors. In fact, it did not have the clout to impose its will, but the industry thought it did because the industry accepted the stereotype of monolithic Catholic power, a stereotype which even today is alive and well among many members of the country's cultural elite.

The symbiosis was one that both sides stumbled into. Like most American religious institutions, the Church was concerned about the impact of films, especially when they became "talkies," on the national morality, and especially the morality of children. Many priests and bishops were dubious about getting into the business of "black-listing" films, that is issuing a list of films that were "condemned." They thought the Church would thus give publicity to films that otherwise would have disappeared. However individual dioceses began to list their condemned films, some lists much harsher than others (to my embarrassment, Chicago had the worst of the blacklists). Rather than have such confusion, the bishops, with greater or lesser reluctance, established the Legion of Decency which would divide films into four categories-Al which was unobjectionable for all, A2 which was unobjectionable for adults, B which was partially objectionable, and C which was condemned.

The industry for its part was concerned about state and federal censorship, which the bishops strongly opposed. Cooperating with the Catholic dominated Production Code administration and the Legion of Decency seemed like a wise strategy to fend off both hard line Protestant critics and the government. Moreover, the industry discovered, it was almost always possible to make a deal with Catholics. To fend off both the Production Code and eventually the Legion, one went to them beforehand and asked what one could do or not do. Then when the legion threatened a B or a C rating one tried to arrange a deal in which, in return for appropriate cuts one could save a film from condemnation and maybe boast a rating from B to A-2. The most fascinating sections of Professor Walsh's study are its accounts of the negotiation between the largely Jewish film industry and the Irish Catholics who administered the Code and the Legion.

The Church actually had two strangleholds on the industry, it controlled, however informally, the offical censorship of the industry itself in the so-called "Hayes Office" (Named after Will Hayes who headed the office) and its Production Code Administration and the unofficial and often much stricter norms of the Legion of Decency.

The Code was composed by four Catholics, the Jesuits Fitzgeorge Devlin and Daniel Lord and two laymen, Martin Quigley (who published one of the two major industry journals) and Joseph Breen, who later became Code Administrator. Father Lord put together the final draft of the Code. Thus Catholics created the Code and administered it. In effect the film industry accepted Catholic control of moral dimensions of film making as the least of all possible evils, and perhaps not without a sigh of relief.

At least now they had a set of rules which they could use as guidelines and with adversaries with whom they could argue and negotiate. They might have thought that Catholic ideas of morality were strange (and many European Catholics did indeed think those ideas were strange), but, good businessmen that they were, they assumed that it was better to negotiate with the Church than fight with it. They did not want to have to cope with massive Catholic boycotts which might destroy films and close down theaters around the country. They knew from bitter experience that whenever they tried to exhibit a film which offended Catholic sensibilities priests would denounce the film from altars all around the country (and often bishops and even cardinals), protest marchers would appear in front of theaters, letters would inundate studios, and vicious editorials would appear in the Catholic press. Did these sentiments represent the way the mass of Catholic laity felt? The producers figured that there was no point in taking a chance that the eager spokesmen did not represent the viewpoints of much of the Catholic population.

The rules imposed by the Code or the Legion, or both are, if nothing else, interesting archaeological data on what the ruling elite of the Catholic Church was worried about in those days-sex and communism. Husbands and wives in the films always slept on twin beds. Pregnancy was never displayed, much less anything about childbirth. Women were forbidden to take off their dresses in the presence of their husbands. Later, slips were permitted, but never panties or bras. Sin must always be acknowledged and punished. Women's costumes had to be "decent." No foul language was permitted. Films about social justice were always though to be part of the communist plot, and that despite the extensive social teaching of the Church, which was, if anything, as critical of capitalism as was Karl Marx. At no time in history, it was ruled, could the Catholic Church be presented in anything but the most favorable light. And heaven help you if you were critical of the Irish!

In retrospect. all of this is embarrassing, though not so much as the blatant anti-Semitism of some of those who were involved in the Church's efforts to keep films "decent."

Eventually the Code was revised as was the Legion, eventually out of existence. The hiearchy has returned to its policy of the early thirties: Don't denounce a film because that will merely call attention to it and provide it with free advertising. Thus the bishops ignored the blatantly anti-Catholic (and inaccurate) film, Priest, about the seal of Confession, leaving it to critics like Roger Ebert to refute its inaccuracies about the seal of confession. As Professor Walsh observes, the higher educational attainment of Catholics and the Second Vatican Council drastically changed the culture of American Catholicism. It is amusing to see on cable some of the films which were denounced from the altar in the old days. The Moon is Bhe and The Outlaw are so utterly harmless that one is hard put to imagine why they occasioned so much controversy.

It is not clear, however, that the relaxed standards have produced better films-not in a summer of Twister, The Rock, The Phenomenon, The Nutty Professor, Cable Guy, Independence Day, etc., etc. Interesting enough, the Disney Hunchback honors the convention of the Maureen O'Hara film-the gypsy is not the daughter of the judge who is not a priest!

Moreover one wonders if the film makers don't wish on some occasions that they had the Legion back. It was certainly preferable to the Reverend Wildmon and to the Southern Baptists who are boycotting Disney because of its policy of granting family rights to gay couples, one of whom works at the studio. With the Catholics you can at least make a deal.

The Code and the Legion did indeed rule Hollywood for two decades. How much did it shape the lives of American Catholics? I have the impression that in the years after the War, most American Catholics paid little attention to it.

In fact, from the very beginning, there was evidence that the Legion and the bishops did not speak for all Catholics, not even all priests. Cardinal Dougherty of Philadelphia (a man whose size earned him the nicknamebehind his back of course-His Immensity) proclaimed a boycott of all movie theaters in his archdiocese. It had some success for a couple of months and then faded without a word.

Many priests opposed the Legion from the beginning, though off the record for fear of their bishops. Some bishops were less than enthused. While the annual Legion "oath" was administered to everyone in church on the appointed Sunday (in most churches), many priests told their congregants that it did not bind under pain of sin-accurate instruction because Catholic moral theologians had always held that forced promises were invalid. Some priests, also accurately, informed their people that the pledge added nothing to the existing obligation to avoid immoral films and the pledge did not involve acceptance of the Legion's system of classification.

On the other hand many priests and many nuns taught that it was a grave sin to attend a B film and in many cases an A-2 film. One could always find, if one wanted to badly enough, a confessor who would say that one might see even a B film if one had determined that the reasons for its classification were not such as to lead one to suspect that it would create a grave problem. When I went to the high school seminary (a day school) many of the priest faculty expressed similar opinions-though a priest at the major seminary warned us before our January vacation to avoid the "ballot."

It turned out that he meant the ballet and his warning came from his objection to the film The Red Danube which, through some horrific mistake, we had seen at the seminary and in which Janet Leigh had appeared briefly in a ballerina's costume. The reaction of my classmates when they finally figured out what he meant was to wonder where you could find a ballet!

In fact, anyone with any sense realizes that the fantasies of the young are filled with hormone-generated erotic imagery that is far more vivid than anything one can see in most films today. If it were not for this imagery the species would not survive. Moreover, there is no convincing evidence that films have a long-term effect on most people. Finally, sexual maturity is taught to the young by the experience of growing up in an environment where adults relate to one another in respectful and loving intimacy. The sexual revolution (which means an increase in pre-marital promiscuity) was caused not by the films but by the Pill-a fact which suggests that much of what was once considered virtue was the result of fear. Indeed, one could make the case that event the Pill did not increase the number of adolescent orgasms, but only the number of completed" sexual acts.

I would like to be able to conclude with a happy ending: Catholic leaders no longer have the power to impose their views on human sexuality on Americans who are not Catholic or even on Americans who are Catholic. However the smoke and mirrors are still at work. Although the evidence that abortion is not an issue which affects Catholic voters, both the right and the left still seem to believe that it does. Indeed both are willing to take as a given that Cardinal John O'Conner and Pat Buchanan are your typical American Catholics.

Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make bigots.