Hollywood Encyclical

Ever since 1934, when the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency forced them to make their products less offensive, cinema producers have been satisfied that their wares matched the highest standards of Christian morality.

Last week they were undeceived. In the longest encyclical he has ever addressed primarily to the archbishops and bishops of the U. S., Pope Pius XI roundly flayed the U. S. motion picture industry, congratulated the Legion of Decency on improving it slightly and advocated reviewing boards in every country in the world to list the cinemas fit for Roman Catholic consumption.

Said the encyclical: ". . . It has been highly pleasing to us to learn of ... the progress which continues to be made by . . . the Legion of Decency. . . .

"It is an excellent experiment that now offers us a most welcome opportunity of manifesting more fully our thought in regard to a matter which touches intimately the moral and religious life of the entire Christian people. . . .

"The essential purpose of art ... is to assist in the perfection of moral personality which is man. . . . For this reason art must itself be moral.

"Even the crudest and most primitive minds, which have neither the capacity nor the desire to make the efforts necessary for ... deductive reasoning, are captivated by the cinema. . . . The cinema . . . must be elevated to conformity with the aims of the Christian conscience. ....

"Everyone knows what damage is done to the soul by bad motion pictures. They are occasions of sin; they seduce young people along the ways of evil by glorifying the passions; they show life under a false light; they cloud ideals; they destroy pure love, respect for marriage and affection for the family. ..."

The encyclical pointed out that "a motion picture is viewed by people who are seated in a dark theatre and whose faculties . . . are relaxed." It deplored the "havoc wrought in the souls of youth and childhood . . . the loss of innocence so often suffered in motion-picture theatres. . . ." It regretted the inability or indisposition of right-minded Catholics to become cinema producers, whose wares would be morally an improvement upon Hollywood's. After 3,500 or so words the encyclical came down "to certain practical indications."

". . . All pastors of souls will undertake to obtain each year from their people a pledge similar to the one . . . given by their American brothers in which they promised to stay away from motion-picture plays which were offensive. . . .

". . . It will be necessary that in each country the bishops set up a permanent national reviewing office in order to be able to promote good motion pictures, classify others and bring this judgment to the knowledge of the priests. . . .

"It will be very proper to entrust this agency to the central organization of the Catholic action. . . .

"The office force must be composed of persons who are familiar with the technique of the motion picture. . . ."

As Pope Pius was well aware, few Hollywood producers are Roman Catholics. Except that he controls a spiritual empire of 331,500,000 souls, most of whom are cinemaddicts, they naturally know very little about the Supreme Pontiff. From their research departments or other sources, Hollywood producers were last week busily discovering that an encyclical has nothing to do with a cycle. Fundamentally as mystified by his comments on the cinema industry as His Holiness might be by a Hollywood story conference, they made futile efforts to gauge the effects of world-wide Papal reviewing boards.

First comment on the encyclical came from Tsar Will Hays, who considered it an implied endorsement of Hollywood's Production Code Administration, headed by Catholic Joseph I. Breen. Since the Legion of Decency--whose prime sponsor, Philadelphia's Cardinal Dougherty, helped the Pontiff frame his encyclical--forced Hollywood to improve its standards, the Legion has condemned only four pictures, (Ecstasy, Guilty Parents, High School Girl, Java Head) none of them made by producers who belong to the Hays organization.

While the Committee of the World Exhibition of the Catholic Press was last week demonstrating its approval of the encyclical by planning an International Cinema Congress in Rome next September, the humble U. S. trade press was expressing in its own way thanks for the compliment of so much attention from the Vatican. Said Variety's headlines: H'WOOD'S REACTIONS VARY ON POPE'S PURITY IN PIX PLEA

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