From the archives.

Throughout 1999, Commonweal has been celebrating its 75th anniversary. Here from the May 29, 1953 issue is an excerpt from "Morals Makyth Movies," by the English Dominican, Gerald Vann.

We are so accustomed to living in a world of man-made ugliness that it may never occur to us that ugliness of that sort means degradation and degradation is a moral evil. It may never occur to us that the wanton creation of ugliness is a sin, just as the wanton infliction of pain is a sin....Ugliness is evil; but the portrayal of ugliness need not be evil, for it may be beautiful, as when great artists paint the carnage of war or the horrors of our industrial cities. It is not the subject matter that makes a book or a picture ugly or beautiful, evil or good, but the mode of its portrayal. Thus there is not necessarily anything wrong in a "bedroom sequence" in a film: It depends on the sequence-and the bedroom. There is not necessarily anything wrong in portraying a bad priest, a murderer, a prostitute: It depends on the effect of the mode of portrayal....

Where the inculcating of false doctrine is concerned there are similar conceptions. The "edifying" film can purvey falsehood just as much as the disedifying one. It is wrong to persuade people through the medium of film that murder or suicide are justified; but it is also wrong to persuade them that Christianity transformed into magic or superstition is a good thing; it is wrong to make them want to be honest because honesty is shown as being always the best policy, or to make them want to be saints because sanctity, as portrayed, is so glamorous.

If the church has been, through its long history, a civilizing influence in the world, it is because Christianity is concerned not with the soul merely but with the whole human personality. The ugliness which surrounds us is, in the last analysis, the effect of evil; and a not negligible part of the church's work in the world consists in attempting to remedy that situation, and to sanctify material things.