The Miracle

One of the trickiest of human emotions is righteous indignation. Last week, as for weeks before, that emotion was being exhibited in all its trickiness by New York Roman Catholics crying "Blasphemy!" and by their opposition crying "Clerical censorship!"

The object of this indignation was a short (40-minute), 2 1/2-year-old, second-rate Italian film called The Miracle. Thanks to court action, denunciations and counter-denunciations in the newspapers, picket lines and counter-picket lines outside the theater, the little movie was a sensation, a scandal and a box-office hit.

Made by famed Producer-Director Roberto (Ingrid Bergman) Rossellini with his then favorite actress, Anna Magnani, it tells the story of a deranged Italian peasant girl who is seduced by a bearded wayfarer under the impression that she is seeing a vision of St. Joseph. Her resulting pregnancy, she is convinced, is of divine origin. For this pathetic delusion she is cruelly badgered by a crowd of villagers, who stage a jeering procession in mockery of this deluded "virgin."

When The Miracle was produced in Italy, it was a flop. It was exhibited at the 1948 Venice Film Festival, but failed to win a prize. The Catholic Cinematographic Center (Italian version of the U.S. Legion of Decency) blacklisted it as "an abominable profanation," and Catholic Action warned "zealous" Catholics not to see it. Italian audiences found it boring, and in its seven-month run it grossed less than $30,000--about half its cost.

In short, in Roman Catholicism's stronghold, The Miracle caused little or no stir. Its maker, Rossellini, was so far from being put in the church's doghouse that in 1949 he got the Vatican's approval of plans to film a life of St. Francis, in which members of the Franciscan order took part.

Last December The Miracle was put on by Manhattan's Paris Theater as one of three shorts under the overall title, Ways of Love (TIME, Dec. 18). Cardinal Archbishop Spellman denounced it as not only a "vile and harmful picture," but also "a despicable affront to every Christian . . . a mockery of our faith." He demanded that the license for The Miracle's showing be revoked by the New York State board of regents. If the board did not have the necessary power, he implied that U.S. Roman Catholics would go all out to change the censorship laws. Promptly, the Catholic War Veterans threw a vociferous picket line around the theater. A few counter-pickets picketed the pickets.

The New York Film Critics awarded Ways of Love its prize for the best foreign-language film of 1950. Warned by the cardinal's office against making the scheduled public presentation of the award on the stage at Radio City Music Hall, the critics discreetly moved the ceremony to the Rainbow Room in the RCA building. The Paris Theater was emptied twice after telephone tips were received that the theater would be bombed. One bombing threat was received by St. Patrick's. But as of this week, not even a stink bomb had gone off in either place.

Outside the battle lines, bystanders asked each other what all the shooting was really about. A strong hint came from Italy. There, Msgr. Albino Galletto, head of the Catholic Cinematographic Center, suggested that in the largely non-Catholic U.S. such a movie might lead non-Catholics to scoff at the church's teaching.*

In plain English, the church's position seemed to be that The Miracle was not very dangerous to the Catholic faith in Italy, but might be quite damaging to the Catholic Church in the U.S. In Italy, the Catholic Church is the established church and can thus afford a certain lenience; in the religiously libertarian U.S., the church feels it must fight for its rights and be vigilant against all slurs.

Instead of simply staying away from The Miracle (like their Italian brethren), U.S. Catholics tried to keep other people from seeing it, and (as outraged citizens as well as deeply offended Christians) shouted, "There ought to be a law!"

*Especially (though Msgr. Galletto did not mention this possibility) so soon after the Assumption of the Virgin Mary became a dogma.

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