The Legion of Decency

 

The film censorship organization Catholic Legion of Decency was formed in 1933 to identify and list movies they felt were objectionable to the point of view of the Catholic Church. The rating system backfired as many Catholics used the list as suggestions. The rating system was revised in 1978 and the organization ceased to exit in 1980.

In the meantime as I was growing up my parents religiously posted on the kitchen bulletin board the current list clipped from the local Catholic newspaper.

Any movie we wanted to see had to be listed in the proper category. A. Seeing a B movie was a sin but going to see something condemned was under the pain of a mortal sin.

A: Morally unobjectionable
B: Morally objectionable in part for all
C: Condemned by the Legion of Decency

I got a lot of mortal sins at the movies. 

Here is a very partial list of movies I saw that were condemned by the Catholic Church's Legion of Decency,

• The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
• Rosemary's Baby
• Never On Sunday
• Barbarella
• Valley of the Dolls
• Billy Jack
• 8 1/2
• Some Like It Hot
• Psycho
• Spartacus
• From Russia With Love
• The Odd Couple
• Clockwork Orange
• The Last Picture Show
• Pink Flamingos
• The Exorcist
• High Plains Drifter
• The Omen
• Taxi Driver
• Dawn of the Dead
• Grease
• All That Jazz

And the list goes on and on.  There was a theater in our neighborhood that ran mostly foreign films and every thing they showed seemed to be condemned. By the time I was 16 I was ignoring the list.