Dogma in Canada (Canada).

Vancouver--The anti-Catholic film Dogma was dropped by its American distributor, Disney, because of the protests from the U.S. Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. A Canadian distributor picked it up.

"Does Alanis have the right to play God?" asked a National Post headline on September 11, which she does in the film Dogma, and the answer must be a resounding "No!" For the Passion Play at Oberammergau, the man selected to play Christ must be someone known in the village for his humility, reverence, and generally good character.

But Canadian singer Alanis Morisette appears nude on the cover of her latest CD; she once penned lyrics about performing oral sex; she has mocked her Catholic upbringing in Ottawa in lyrics such as "I sang Alleluia in the choir/I confessed my darkest deeds to envious men"; and she has said that when she lost her virginity at the age of 19 she discovered "how beautiful and freeing and godlike it was." Nothing resembling humility, modesty, or reverence here.

The film's writer and director, Kevin Smith, maintains that he is a practising Catholic and that this movie was "from first to last, always intended as a love letter to both faith and God Almighty." The claim is spurious in view of what the film shows. No real Catholic would have depicted a woman who claimed to be a descendant of Mary and Joseph--much less show her working in an abortion clinic. Or shown two fallen angels who try to exploit a "loophole" in Catholic teaching in order to sneak back into heaven. Or invented a thirteenth apostle, a black man, who maintains that he was eliminated from the Bible because of racial discrimination. Or brought in a character who mounts a campaign to replace crucifixes with a smiling "Buddy Jesus."

After Disney dropped the film, Lions Gate Films of Vancouver bought the rights to distribute it, and a vice-president of this company, Peter Waal, defends their right to circulate it with the usual lame excuse: "Everyone has a right to their own opinion. It's a free country." But no one has the right to stir up hatred of the Catholic, or any other faith, by issuing a blasphemous travesty of its dogma, history, and rituals. Whether this film is merely trash or trash that sells, no decent society ought to tolerate something so offensive to the religious beliefs of a large part of its population.