From the archives
Commonweal 6 October 22,1999 From the archives Thioughout 1999, Commonweal has been celebrating its 75th an-niversary Here from the May 29, 1953 issue is an excerpt from '" Morals Makyth...
...Where the inculcating of false doctrine is concerned there are similar conceptions...
...If the church has been, through its long history, a civilizing influence in the world, it is because Christianity i.s concerned not with the soul merely but with the whole human personality...
...I he ugliness which surrounds us is, in the last analysis, the cttect ot evil...
...and a not negligible part of the church's w ork in the w orld consists in attempting to remedy that situation, and to sanc-tifv material things...
...but it is also wrong to persuade them that Christianity transformed into magic or supei station is a good thing, it is wrong to make them want to be honest because hon-estv is shown as being always the best policy, or to make them want to he saints because sanctity, as portrayed, i^ so glamorous...
...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...
...Commonweal 6 October 22,1999 From the archives Thioughout 1999, Commonweal has been celebrating its 75th an-niversary 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 ot man-made ugliness that it may never occur to us that ugliness of that sort means degradation and degradation is a moral evil, ft 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 ev il, but the portrayal of ugliness need not be e\ il, for it may be beautiful, as when great artists paint the carnage ot war or the horrors of our industrial cities...
...Gfrald Vans...
...There is not necessarily anything wrong in portraving a bad priest, a murderer, a prostitute: It depends on the effect of the mode of portrayal...
...It is wrong to persuade people through the medium of film that murder or sun ide are justified...
...The "edifying" lilm can purvey falsehood just as much as the disedih ing one...
Vol. 126 • October 1999 • No. 18
