User:Ccoyle1231/National legion of decency

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The National Legion of Decency was a Catholic organization founded in 1933 and publicly announced in 1934. The Legion was established during a time when Hollywood films were becoming increasingly popular in American life. When establishing the Legion, bishops pointed to the prevalence of morally offensive films depicting sexual activity that is frowned upon within the Catholic Church. Bishops also based their decisions on their belief that films were the “greatest menace” to American society and controversial social science studies that claimed films were responsible for crime and other societal challenges in 1930s America.

During the Legion’s early years, it established a rating system that assessed films based on their moral content. The films were graded on a scale from A to C with “A” being morally permissible and “C” being morally unacceptable. The Legion also published and distributed pamphlets and fliers encouraging Catholics to not view certain films it viewed as immoral. Films were targeted for including content such as premarital sex, portrayals of marriage that fell outside of Catholic norms at the time, LGBTQ+ content, and abortion. The Legion also targeted films that were seen as being critical of the Church’s activities. Some notable examples of films that received a “C” rating are Some Like it Hot and From Russia with Love. From the 1930s through the 1960s, Catholic parishes in dioceses across the country administered yearly pledges in which millions of Catholics throughout the US vowed to refuse to watch films that were condemned by the Legion.

Although the US was not a majority-Catholic country at the time of the Legion’s existence, the Legion had a significant influence on the entertainment industry as a whole. The Legion was able to lobby for Joseph Breen, a conservative Catholic, to become head of the Production Code Administration (PCA), a group that acted as the internal censorship agency for many of Hollywood’s largest production companies. While in charge, Breen required all films desiring to receive the PCA’s approval to be personally approved by him. Because it was considered to be a grave sin for Catholics to view films condemned by the Legion, it was often difficult for films with a rating of “C” to be successful at the box office.

In his book about the Catholic Church’s censorship activities in the United States from 1933-1970, scholar James Skinner wrote that by the late 1950s and early to mid-1960s, the Legion was beginning to lose its influence both within Hollywood and within the Catholic Church. Skinner noted that in some cases, young Catholics throughout the country saw a “C” rating as a reason to see a particular film. He argued that as a result of the Church’s liberalization after the Second Vatican Council, a growing number of First-Amendment lawsuits, and the loss of the initial enthusiasm for the Legion, the Legion ceased to exist by the mid 1960s. In 1965, the Legion was restructured as the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures (NCOMP), but scholars such as Skinner argue that the NCOMP failed to exert as much influence over Hollywood as the Legion.