Catholic Sensibility

The Catholic News Service reviews movies and assigns its own ratings based on the appropriateness of the content for kids, teens, or adults. Often, it will assign a rating of "O" for something its USCCB reviewers would deem "morally offensive." This review has been getting bad press in some quarters. Why, some people ask, would the USCCB bother with sending a person to review such a film? Many mainstream films get O ratings. If the USCCB didn't rate them, it would be misinterpreted as tacit approval. Catholics populate movie theatres in the same numbers as the rest of the citizenry; don't they deserve to know where Catholic reviewers stand on these films and why? These reviews began almost twenty years ago, if my memory is correct, just to provide an alternative to the self-policing and self-rating of the film industry. I read movie reviews in detail. Thumbs up or down, A1, A3, or O, is fine for a second’s glance. I want to the movie in a little more detail before I go see it. David DiCerto makes some important points in his review of the documentary in question, writing that it "tries so hard in its attempt to position its subject as a rallying point for First Amendment rights that it politely glosses over -- though doesn't completely ignore -- the film's more sordid particulars (including the facts surrounding its financing by mobsters, and Boreman's abusive relationship with then-husband Chuck Traynor), and gives short shrift to arguments that the film degraded and exploited women." This is an important argument. I don't think it's enough to say, "Porn movies are bad. Don't watch them. The Church says so" These movies are not bad because the Church says they are. They're bad because they cause grave harm to people, therefore, the Church teaches as it does. Somebody unimpressed with the USCCB’s official statement might ponder the simple argument that these movies are sexist and anti-feminist. DiCerto continues, "Drawing cautionary parallels to today's ‘culture war,’ ‘Inside Deep Throat’ seems to suggest that anyone who opposes pornography is somehow an enemy of freedom of expression, a view that fails to take seriously the sincere objections of those who feel that, from a moral standpoint, pornography is offensive to the sacred dignity of sex and the human person." I don’t want to see the movie. DiCerto isn't advocating anyone else see it. But I am interested in how the movie’s producers think.