The Catholic Church and the Media

in the Early 20th Century

The last decade of the 20th century witnessed a development in the field of

communications technologies as explosive and pervasive as the communications revolution

unleashed by the invention of moveable type 500 years before. This has rightly piqued the

interest and the pastoral concern of the leaders of the Catholic Church. But the spate of recent

documents from the Pontifical Council for Social Communication are not the Church’s first

attempt to deal with the phenomenon of mass electronic communication. For that, we need to go

to the early stages in the evolution of these media.

This paper will offer a cursory presentation of how the Catholic Church responded to the

development of mass media in the first half of the 20th century, beginning with the popularization

of motion pictures and concluding with the post-war period. I believe that awareness of this

context can serve as an important interpretive tool for reading the pre-conciliar papal documents

on media, namely Vigilanti Cura (Pius XI) and Miranda Prorsus (Pius XII). The two encyclicals

focus especially on the human and social dimensions of the media. This would be

institutionalized even linguistically by Vatican II’s choice of the term “instruments of social

communication” rather than “mass media.”

The attitude of the Church toward the new media of the early twentieth century, mainly

radio and motion pictures, must not be sought only in official teaching, but in the action-in-

history of Church members and organizations. From at least 1928 to 1957 (that is, with the

publication of Miranda Prorsus), Church members were actively engaging with the media. For

example:

• ¬ By 1912, a Salesian parish in northern Italy ran a “projection hall,”

showing educational and cultural films for youth groups and the elderly.
• ¬ The International Federation of Catholic Alumnae reviewed and rated
 movies; in 1922 the organization began collaborating with the Motion Picture
Producers and Distributors Association’s Committee on Public Relations.
• ¬ Father Daniel Lord, SJ, was a consultant for Cecil B. deMille’s King of
Kings (1927).
• ¬ The International Catholic Organization for Cinema was founded in 1928.
• ¬ Fulton Sheen began broadcasting The Catholic Hour on NBC Radio in
1930.
• ¬ Papal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli contacted Marconi in 1930 to
design and build Vatican Radio (first broadcast, February 1931).

This active presence in the world of mass communication meant that Catholics were in a

position to offer some insight, and even contribute to the evolution of these new media. Wireless

programming evolved differently in different socio-political contexts. Peace, prosperity and

political freedom meant that the media, especially motion pictures, enjoyed rapid growth in the

United States. That put the Church in the U.S. in a position to assess the impact and potential of

these media, and then to directly address them.

The Catholic Church had been addressing media issues sporadically since the time of

Gutenberg, but early responses on the part of the hierarchy tended to be limited to the realm of

scholarship. After all, books could only impact the literate: reading involved a process of

decoding and abstraction from symbols, and only scholars had the time for that. The onset of

photography and “wireless” communication brought on an entirely different set of pastoral

concerns. These media engage the senses directly: there is no “mediation” and therefore no

“literacy” required. Anyone with eyes and ears is subject to the impact of these technologies, and

brought into any action or discussion whatever, witnessing these not simply as an individual, but

as a member of a potentially unlimited audience. Even the spread of the “new means” was

prodigious: the birth of motion picture technology is usually dated 1895. By 1909, there were

40,000 people employed in the motion picture industry in New York City alone. As early as

1916, campaign films were promoting Woodrow Wilson’s bid for the Presidency. At the same

time radio, first conceived in terms of military communication, was being recognized as a
medium for popular programming.

The im-mediate and sense-oriented nature of radio and motion pictures meant that these

media were not so much “interpreted” as “encountered”: think of the panicked crowds fleeing a

theater to escape the oncoming train—on the screen. For that early screen audience, the mediated

image was experienced as present, and the response was unreflected and instinctual. No wonder

moral concerns were raised almost as soon as film production began!

A lawsuit involving D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation led to a 1915 Supreme Court

decision “unanimously and pointedly [excluding] all motion pictures from First Amendment

protection,” equating the industry simply with free trade and not with the communication of

ideas. In fact, in its early development, film productions were not taken all that seriously: cinema

was thought to be simply another kind of game, a device for mindless entertainment. As such, it

was clearly subject to limits and controls. Censorship issues were raised—or censorship taken for

granted—as early as 1907, when Chicago police had the right to inspect and “license” all films

according to criteria of morality. The motion picture industry was terrified of the idea of

censorship and waged continual battle against it, claiming that “self-censorship” in the form of a

code or list of principles would be sufficient and effective in addressing the concerns of parents,

clergy and civic leaders. The rank and file kept attempting to put some controls on the industry:

despite the studios’ best efforts, 90 U.S. cities had censorship offices for motion pictures by

1925. This was the year after the Industry adopted a (non-enforceable) self-censorship formula

calling for the submission of screenplays and plots.

Through the first decades of ferment, the Catholic Church in the United States was

surprisingly quiet. On the whole, pastoral issues relating to the burgeoning Catholic population

probably demanded the most attention. Various U.S. dioceses addressed the matter of motion

picture content—sometimes at the initiative of the local bishop, sometimes because of the
interest and action of a lay group. There was little consensus on exactly what to do. Then came

the Depression. Studies owned their own theater chains and had invested millions of dollars in

equipping their production facilities and movie palaces for “talkies.” The stock market crash

occurred during this costly infrastructure upgrade, leaving every studio in Hollywood on the

brink of bankruptcy. “Hollywood determined that sensationalism and exciting action in greater

quantities were required to lure the missing millions back…. [From 1930-1934] films were racier

and more explicit than ever before”. To fill the genre gap generated by sound technology

(“talkies” opened the way to musicals), Broadway productions were hastily adapted to film,

bringing their more provocative themes to the silver screen.

It is not hard to see that this would have provoked a backlash on the part of “decent, God-

fearing citizens” who were more than likely unnerved by other cultural experiments in the

“Flapper Age.” “The impetus for a moral crusade had to come from an institution with power

and respect. The Catholic voice, which had not always been in the forefront of demands for

screen censorship, was being heard more loudly”.

The industry’s 1930 “Hays Code,” drafted by Father Daniel Lord, SJ and prominent

Catholic publisher Martin Quigley, was “too little, too late”—especially since there was no

provision for enforcement. As Pius XI noted, it “proved to have but slight effect.” In fact, James

Skinner observed, “Few films seemed complete without a studied contravention of the Code”.

This is precisely the context in which the Legion of Decency was conceived.

The establishment of the “Legion of Decency” with its pledge and published list of

movies was not the start of something new, nor was it, strictly speaking, an episcopal imposition

upon the laity—far from it! The action of the Episcopal Committee for Motion Pictures provided

a unified approach to action that was already being taken in a variety of ways across the nation.

That unity led to incredible strength. In the first year of its existence, even before the National
Office was established in New York, the Legion of Decency had seen between seven and nine

million Catholics take its pledge. This created a powerful sense of belonging, and the kind of

pride that comes from being on the high moral ground. In addition, the kind of action typically

taken against “immoral” films (pickets, parades and petitions) was itself a kind of drama. It

created a spirit of solidarity and civic pride, and its success enhanced Legion of Decency (and

Catholic) prestige and power.

Within two years, the bishops approved a simple A-B-C ratings system for the Legion.

An A rating was not “excellent” or even “approved”; the bishops had already determined that

only negative judgments were to be given. “A” meant “not disapproved.” It was up to the local

Ordinary to determine what, if any, action was to be taken for B and C-rated movies. Studios

learned from grim experience that “the Condemned [C] rating…was a magisterial judgment that

usually consigned the guilty object to ostracism and swift oblivion”.

The founding of the Legion of Decency preceded, only by about a year, the establishment

of Hollywood’s “Production Code Administration,” headed by decidedly Catholic Joseph

Ignatius Breen. The PCA was not a studio tool; it was able to impose a fine for non-compliance

with its Code, and theater chains subscribing to it could not even book films that did not carry

the PCA seal of approval. The Legion of Decency had no such tools, and yet producers and

distributors who had managed to stave off official censorship submitted to the indignity of seeing

their scripts rewritten, takes cut or even reshot, artistic visions compromised as they scrambled

for at least a “B” rating from the Legion. For about twenty years, popular support for the Legion

of Decency was such that even powerhouse studios reluctantly submitted. The combination of a

PCA office with teeth, and the growing power of the Legion of Decency was such that by

November 1937 “of the 1,271 titles reviewed [by the Legion of Decency]… 91 percent were

approved in the A-1 and A-II categories”. Little surprise, then, that Pius XI, in addressing his
1936 encyclical to the U.S. bishops, would see the Legion of Decency as an appropriate and

praiseworthy pastoral initiative. It is only natural for the Pope to have been heartened by what

seemed to be the beneficent influence of this creation of the bishops.

Vigilianti Cura focuses strictly on motion pictures, and its concerns are almost entirely

pastoral. The encyclical urges bishops to exercise “vigilant care” so that the faithful will make

appropriate use of the medium. Pius XI specifically calls for the establishment, in every nation,

of “Legion of Decency” style organizations and services, with international links among them for

the sake of a unified message. (This also reflects awareness of the international exchange of

productions; the dominance of Hollywood is likewise acknowledged.)

Meanwhile, trouble was brewing in Europe. Joseph Goebbels had been appointed

Propaganda Minister for Germany, and the German motion picture industry was nationalized.

1500 filmmakers fled the country, but their loss did not stop the production of propaganda

movies. Radio, too, was a means for Nazi propaganda. Hitler had even had small radios mass-

produced for wide distribution to the German population (by war’s end, 70% of German families

had a radio—the highest percentage in the world). This made it easy for the Nazis to nourish

anti-semitism and to present their ongoing invasions and annexations of neighboring countries in

a positive light.

In the field of radio, the Church’s own communication was anything but abstract.

Marilyn Matelski places the origins of Vatican Radio in the years after the unification of Italy,

when the Papal States were taken from the Pope, who remained “prisoner of the Vatican.” With

Mussolini’s rise to power, “the implicit threat of future repression lingered…. Pacelli suggested

that the Holy See investigate the possibilities of incorporating a new medium, ‘radio,’ into

Church propagation. Through radio, no pope could ever be driven into isolation again;

geographic and political borders had become virtually meaningless when confronted by the ‘air
waves’ of broadcast technology”. Inaugurated on February 12, 1931 by Pius XI (Marconi, of

course, was present), it was the first “transnational” radio station in the world.

The most significant entry of the Catholic Church in world communication came on

January 21 and 22, 1940. The January 21 broadcast, made in German, was the “first in world

radio to report the imprisonment of Jewish and Polish prisoners in ‘sealed ghettos.’ From that

point on, Vatican Radio continued to feature stories on concentration camps and other Nazi

torture chambers”. Ronald Rychlak, in his study of Pius XII and World War II, states that the

second Vatican Radio report, made in English by an American Jesuit, was ordered by Pius XII

and “intended for American broadcast”. At any rate, the New York Times picked it up. Another

broadcast a few days later (January 26) got attention from the world press and provoked a protest

from Germany.

Vatican Radio served as a kind of technological papal “legate” in dealing with both sides

of the war. Subject to jamming from Nazis and Soviets, it was still free from their control. It

countered German propaganda claims in Spain, for example, by increasing Spanish broadcasts

on four short-wave bands, answering German claims by narrating Nazi atrocities. (Rychlak notes

that “researchers discovered that Pius XII personally authored many of the intensely anti-German

statements beamed around the world…. [as well as] directives…regarding the content of the

broadcasts”.)

Throughout the war, Pius XII actively used Jesuit-run Vatican Radio as a worldwide

pulpit, even though the Vatican had specified, as the war broke out, “that Vatican Radio would

be an independent, autonomous entity and not an organ of the Holy See”. Vatican Radio was also

a key player in locating prisoners of war and missing persons as the war dragged to a close:

about a quarter of a million short-wave messages were sent out by the Vatican Information

Bureau.
 Until 1957, no papal document dealt specifically with radio: Vatican Radio itself was the

exposition of the Pope’s understanding of the use and power of these medium. Pius XII’s

Miranda Prorsus would touch on radio, but by then Vatican Radio was in decline from a

programming standpoint, even if its technological reach was being improved. A significant point

Pius XII makes in the encyclical (which for the most part dealt with motion pictures) concerns

the need for radio listeners to respond to programming: without such listener feedback, radio is

simply one-way transmission, not “social” communication.

20th century developments in mass communication involved Catholics as technicians,

writers, actors, producers and audience, and so were of vital concern to Church leaders, including

Popes. Grass-roots action on the part of civic and religious groups led the way to the creation of

the Legion of Decency by the U.S. Catholic bishops. Held up by Pope Pius XI as an ideal form

of pastoral action, the Legion reflected ideals of white middle class respectability in its ratings of

movies. However, these seem to have been in line with the approach any other civic-minded

group of the time would have taken. Only toward the 1950s when some serious and truly artistic

films were condemned on the basis of the Legion’s non-contextual “checklist” approach to virtue

and vice did some reviewers and thoughtful Catholics take a step back to question the usefulness

of the system. But by then the Legion was beginning to lose influence with the Catholic audience

itself. For better or for worse, the Legion of Decency had had a profound impact on the shaping

of the motion picture arts in the United States.

Catholic involvement in radio took varied form, particularly in the United States where

several priests became national radio personalities. The role of Vatican Radio during World War

II was exceptional for its presence as the “voice of the Pope” responding to the issues of the day.

The service rendered to displaced persons after the war also testifies to the social role the Church

sees for media.

 Catholic involvement in the development of media technology and pastoral concerns

raised in matters of content, along with the use of these technologies for Nazi and Communist

propaganda, provided the impetus for Papal intervention in the form of numerous audiences and

allocutions directed to media professionals and of two encyclicals specifically dealing with

media technology.

Concerns that come through especially strongly in the two encyclicals include: the

influence of media products on human thinking and values (especially the moral dimension, but

also the doctrinal); the potential of these technologies for education and evangelization; the

potentially negative influence of media messages on the young; a concern to organize ecclesial

groups on the national and international levels to facilitate exchange of information and harmony

of approach. But any profound reading of these encyclicals must begin from an awareness of the

media world from which they were issued, including the very active part played by Catholics in

the evolution of the “media of social communication.”

 Bibliography

Eilers, SVD, Franz-Josef, ed. Church and Social Communication: Basic Documents. Manila:
Logos, 1993.
Matelski, Marilyn. Vatican Radio: Propagation by the Airwaves, Media and Society Series.
Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995.
Rychlak, Ronald. Hitler, the War and the Pope. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2000.
Skinner, James. The Cross and the Cinema: The Legion of Decency and the National Cathlic
Office for Motion Pictures, 1933-1970. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993.
Soukup, SJ, Paul. Jesuit Response to the Comunications Revolution, Studies in the Spirituality of
Jesuits, 21. St. Louis: Seminar on Jesuit Spiritality, 1989.