By Order of the Board

The battle over whether New Yorkers should be permitted to see Roberto Rossellini's film, The Miracle (TIME, Jan. 19), moved last week from a picket-lined sidewalk in Manhattan to Albany. After a special screening, ten members of the state's Board of Regents (2 Catholics, 2 Protestants, 6 Jews), agreed with Cardinal Spellman's denunciation of the film, unanimously voted to ban it, despite the protests of an impressive roster of citizens--including churchmen and lay Catholics.

The board wrote a firm review: "In this country where we enjoy the priceless heritage of religious freedom, the law recognizes that men and women of all faiths respect the religious beliefs held by others. The mockery or profaning of these beliefs that are sacred to any portion of our citizenship is abhorrent to the laws of this great state. . . This picture takes the concept so sacred to them. . . and associates it with drunkenness, seduction, mockery and lewdness."

The picture's distributor, Joseph Burstyn, unable to get a stay of enforcement, brought action in the appellate division of the state supreme court, where he will probably get a hearing early next month. Conceding the right of Catholics to object to The Miracle, Burstyn protested that "an organized minority is dictating through various pressure tactics to the entire citizenry of the state what it may or may not see in the movies ..."

Meanwhile, at Manhattan's Paris Theater, a sign in the box-office window announced: "By order of the Board of Regents, The Miracle is not being shown..."

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