Stanley Forman Reed

“ What might have been definite when a controlling church imposed a detailed scheme of observances becomes impossibly confused and uncertain when hundreds of sects, with widely disparate and often directly conflicting ideas of sacredness, enjoy, without discrimination and in equal measure, constitutionally guaranteed religious freedom. In the Rome of the late emperors, the England of James I, or the Geneva of Calvin, and today in Roman Catholic Spain, Mohammedan Saudi Arabia, or any other country with a monolithic religion, the category of things sacred might have clearly definable limits. ”

“ If 'sacrilegious' bans more than the physical abuse of sacred persons, places, or things, if it permits censorship of religious opinions, which is the effect of the holding below, the term will include what may be found to be 'blasphemous.' England's experience with that treacherous word should give us pause, apart from our requirements for the separation of Church and State. The crime of blasphemy in Seventeenth Century England was the crime of dissenting from whatever was the current religious dogma. ”

“ Sacrilege: 'the crime of taking any thing dedicated to devine worship. The crime of profaning any thing sacred.'
Profane: 'to apply any thing sacred to common use. To be irreverent to sacred persons or things. To put to a wrong use.'
Gordon and Marchant, A New Complete English Dictionary (London, 1760) .
Blasphemy: 'is an offering some indignity to God himself.'
Sacrilege: 'is the crime of appropriating to himself what is devoted to religion; the crime of robbing Heaven.'
Buchanan, A New English Dictionary (London, 1769) . ”

“ And that is the fair inference to be drawn, as a matter of experience, from what has been happening under the New York censorship. Consequently the film industry, normally not guided by creative artists, and cautious in putting large capital to the hazards of courage, would be governed by its notions of the feelings likely to be aroused by diverse religious sects, certainly the powerful ones. The effect of such demands upon art and upon those whose function is to enhance the culture of a society need not be labored. ”

“ The Constitution, we cannot recall too often, is an organism, not merely a literary composition.
If the New York Court of Appeals had given 'sacrilegious' the meaning it has had in Catholic thought since St. Thomas Aquinas formulated its scope, and had sustained a finding by the Board of Regents that 'The Miracle' came within that scope, this Court would have to meet some of the broader questions regarding the relation to the motion picture industry of the guarantees of the First Amendment so far as reflected in the Fourteenth. ”

“ It is not a sufficient answer to say that 'sacrilegious' is definite, because all subjects that in any way might be interpreted as offending the religious beliefs of any one of the 300 sects of the United States [55] are banned in New York. To allow such vague, undefinable powers of censorship to be exercised is bound to have stultifying consequences on the creative process of literature and art-for the films are derived largely from literature. ”

“ History teaches us the indefiniteness of the concept 'sacrilegious' in another respect. In the case of most countries and times where the concept of sacrilege has been of importance there has existed an established church or a state religion. ”

“ Assuming that a state may establish a system for the licensing of motion pictures, an issue not foreclosed by the Court's opinion, our duty requires us to examine the facts of the refusal of a license in each case to determine whether the principles of the First Amendment have been honored. ”

“ Moved by a whim of appetite, she snitches an apple from the basket of a woman next to her. When she leaves the church, a cackling beggar tries to make her share the apple with him, but she chases him away as by habit and munches the fruit contentedly. ”

“ To stop short of proscribing all subjects that might conceivably be interpreted to be religious, inevitably creates a situation whereby the censor bans only that against which there is a substantial outcry from a religious group. ”

“ In October, 1948, a month after the Rome premiere of 'The Miracle,' the Vatican's censorship agency, the Catholic Cinematographic Centre, declared that the picture 'constitutes in effect an abominable profanation from religious and moral view-points.' [4] By the Lateran agreements and the Italian Constitution the Italian Government is bound to bar whatever may offend the Catholic religion. However, the Catholic Cinematographic Centre did not invoke any governmental sanction thereby afforded. The Italian Government's censorship agency gave 'The Miracle' the regular nulla osta clearance. ”

“ William P. Clancy, a teacher at the University of Notre Dame, wrote in The Commonweal, the well-known Catholic weekly, that 'the film is not obviously blasphemous or obscene, either in its intention or execution.' [22] The Commonweal itself questioned the wisdom of transforming Church dogma which Catholics may obey as 'a free act' into state-enforced censorship for all. [23] Allen Tate, the well-known Catholic poet and critic, wrote: 'The picture seems to me to be superior in acting and photography but inferior dramatically. ”

“ However, the National Board of Review (a nonindustry lay organization devoted to raising the level of motion pictures by mobilizing public opinion, under the slogan 'Selection Not Censorship') [13] recommended the picture as 'especially worth seeing.' New York critics on the whole praised 'The Miracle'; those who dispraised did not suggest sacrilege. [14] On December 27 the critics selected the 'Ways of Love' as the best foreign language film in 1950. ”

“ In a scene of brutal torment, they first flatter and laughingly mock her, then they cruelly shove and hit her and clamp a basin as a halo on her head. Even abused by the beggars, the poor girl gathers together her pitiful rags and sadly departs from the village to live alone in a cave. ”

“ From 1768 to the eleventh edition in 1911, merely a brief dictionary-type definition was given for 'sacrilege.' [49] The eleventh edition, which first published a longer article, was introduced as follows: 'the violation or profanation of sacred things, a crime of varying scope in different religions. It is naturally much more general and accounted more dreadful in those primitive religions in which cultural objects play so great a part, than in more highly spiritualized religions where they tend to disappear. But wherever the idea of sacred exists, sacrilege is possible. ”

“ But in America the multiplicity of the ideas of 'sacredness' held with equal but conflicting fervor by the great number of religious groups makes the term 'sacrilegious' too indefinite to satisfy constitutional demands based on reason and fairness. ”

“ It is hardly necessary to comment that the limits of this definition remain too uncertain to justify constraining the creative efforts of the imagination by fear of pains and penalties imposed by a necessarily subjective censorship. It is true that some earlier dictionaries assigned to 'sacrilege' the broader meaning of 'abusing Sacraments or holy Mysteries,' [46] but the broader meaning is more indefinite, not less. ”

“ All had English subtitles. Both liMotion Picture Division of the New York State Education Department. The Division is directed by statute to 'issue a license' 'unless (the) film or a part thereof is obscene, indecent, immoral, inhuman, sacrilegious, or is of such a character that its exhibition would tend to corrupt morals or incite to crime.' N.Y. Education Law, § 122. ”

“ A motion picture portraying Christ as divine-for example, a movie showing medieval Church art-would offend the religious opinions of the members of several Protestant denominations who do not believe in the Trinity, as well as those of a non-Christian faith. ”

“ Of the fifty-odd reported appeals to the Board of Regents from denials of licenses by the Division, only three concern the category 'sacrilegious.' [27] In these cases, as in others under the Act, the Board's reported opinion confines itself to a bare finding that the film was or was not 'sacrilegious,' without so much as a description of the allegedly offensive matter, or even of the film as a whole to enlighten the inquirer. ”

“ See also Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, 'Blasphemy'; Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 'Blasphemy'; Nokes, A History of the Crime of Blasphemy (1928) .↑ 1 Yorke, The Life of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke (1913) , 80, writes thus of the prosecution of Thomas Woolston for blasphemy: 'The offence, in the first place, consisted in the publication in 1725 of a tract entitled A Moderator between an Infidel and an Apostate, in which the author questioned the historical accuracy of the Resurrection and the Virgin Birth. ”