From "The Follyhood Of Hollywood" Department - Catholic Influence On Popular Entertainment

Remember all the yap and yammer about the "golden age of Hollywood"?  Supposedly that occurred between the late 1930s to the late 1950s.  There were some well-made movies, true.  But..does the clip below strike you as anything "golden"?



Hollywood put out some raunchy stuff in its nascent days.  However, some of that was abated in the mid 20th century.  Events such as the Great Depression and World War II served to bring some sobriety not only to the moguls of Hollywood but also to the general public that seemed to slurp up Hollywood's products.  But there was another influence on Hollywood that served to stem some of the moral slop.  I am talking of the Legion of Decency.  It was founded in 1933 with the specific aim of bringing Catholic morality to bear on the entertainment industry.  The Legion put out lists of movies with different ratings based on the morality - or lack thereof - the various movies made during that time.  Here is a list of the movies that they condemned; a brief glace at the titles gives more than an inkling of the reason for the condemnations.

Members of the Legion took a pledge not only to boycott the condemned movies but also the theater that showed the movies.  At that time, the Catholic Church was held in high esteem and its voice carried great weight - certainly among the Catholics in the pew but also on non-Catholics as well.  Their power of the purse was quite considerable.  Hollywood realized that it made good economic sense to clean up at least a sizable portion of their offerings.

The influence of the Legion started to wane in the early 1970s, just as the horrible ramifications of the "spirit of Vatican II" began to sap the vitality from Catholic spiritual life and soon the movies started to assume their former depravity and even exceeded it.  What this shows that the Catholic Church, when she had her moral credibility intact, was a definite force for moral good in this country, protestant as it was.  Nowadays, even otherwise faithful Catholics show just as much imprudence regarding entertainment as do their non-Catholic counterparts.  See here and here for previous writings on this matter.

This past week at the Golden Globes awards, Michelle Williams accepted a cheap bauble, and made a speech lauding "women's rights", attributing her award to the murder of her own child.  We even have Disney putting forth a cartoon series to introduce children to the occult and practice of witchcraft.  The trailer is below.  Bear in mind that these Hollywood trends are nothing new.  The first clip from the 1920s and 1930s bears that out.  Catholic influence, in the form of the Legion of Decency, held them at bay for a while, but now that so many bishops care so little for the Faith, Hollywood can once again run amok.  We won't get our culture on a decent trend until we clean out the filth from our Church.