James Day, an EWTN operations manager, asks in the National Catholic Register whether cinema itself can be Catholic, praising Hollywood’s Golden Age for a “sacramental vision” and naming Frank Capra, John Ford, Leo McCarey, Roberto Rossellini, and Robert Bresson as exemplars. The article, reflecting on a forthcoming EWTN series, treats the moral and spiritual atmosphere of mid-20th‑century films as a latent Catholic inheritance, even when no priest or saint appears on screen. This approach is not a defense of Catholic art but a naturalistic reduction of the faith to an aesthetic mood, a symptom of the post‑conciliar dissolution of doctrine into sentiment.
The article opens by framing the question around Mel Gibson’s upcoming *The Resurrection of the Christ*, then immediately shifts to a broader inquiry: “What makes cinema Christian, or Catholic? Is it the subject matter? … Or can cinema itself, even without overt religious content, be shaped by a Catholic understanding of reality?” The very formulation reveals the modernist premise: Catholicism is no longer a divinely instituted society with authoritative teachings, but a diffuse “understanding of reality” that can be extracted from secular films and reassembled into a television series. The author’s working title, *Catholic Hollywood*, already conflates the Church of Christ with the American motion‑picture industry, a hallmark of the conciliar Church’s capitulation to worldly culture.
Day’s method is explicitly subjective and experiential. He describes being drawn back to these films because they “were operating according to assumptions no longer common in contemporary cinema,” and he identifies the core of their appeal as “an understanding of the human person, of suffering, of obligation, of redemption.” He never once cites the *Catechism of the Council of Trent*, the encyclical *Quas Primas* of Pius XI, or the condemnations of Modernism in *Lamentabili sane exitu*. The criterion is not the objective truth of Catholic doctrine but a shared “ethos, an intuition, a way of thinking and feeling.” This is precisely the modernist error condemned by St. Pius X: “The faith of the Church is contrary to history, and Catholic dogmas in no way agree with the real beginnings of the Christian religion” (*Lamentabili*, prop. 3). Day does not reject the proposition explicitly, but his entire approach embodies it, treating Catholicism as a sensibility rather than a body of revealed truths.
The linguistic register of the article further betrays its theological poverty. Phrases like “a kind of secular sacramentality,” “the visible world bearing invisible significance,” and “grace enters not through spectacle, but surrender” are vague, horizontal, and horizontalizing. They could be applied to any vaguely spiritual experience. The author never distinguishes between sanctifying grace, actual grace, and mere natural kindness. The supernatural order, which is the whole purpose of the Church’s existence, is dissolved into a generalized “moral and spiritual atmosphere.” This is the language of the post‑conciliar sect, which has replaced the preaching of the Gospel with a saccharine humanism.
The choice of filmmakers is itself revealing. Frank Capra’s populist optimism, John Ford’s ritualized communities, and Leo McCarey’s attention to aging and marriage are all treated as expressions of a latent Catholicism. Yet Capra’s films often exalt the individual conscience against legitimate authority, a sentiment that echoes the Americanist heresy condemned by Leo XIII. Ford’s ritualism is praised as “deeply sacramental,” but the term is emptied of its proper meaning: the sacraments are efficacious signs of grace instituted by Christ, not a cinematic technique for evoking mood. McCarey’s *Make Way for Tomorrow* is commended for confronting “aging, filial obligation and human dignity,” but the film’s naturalistic resolution—a family reconciliation without any reference to the Fourth Commandment or the grace of the sacraments—is held up as a model of Catholic sensibility. The author never asks whether these films actually lead souls to Christ or whether they merely flatter the natural virtues.
The treatment of Roberto Rossellini is particularly instructive. Rossellini, whose later films with Ingrid Bergman were born of an adulterous relationship, is described as “deeply concerned with spiritual dislocation and the possibility of reconciliation.” The article passes over his public scandal in silence, treating his personal life as irrelevant to his spiritual vision. This is the very inversion of Catholic moral teaching: the sanctity of the artist is measured not by his fidelity to God’s law but by the aesthetic quality of his work. St. Pius X warned that “the pursuit of novelty in the investigation of the foundations of things leads … to the most grievous errors” (*Lamentabili*, prop. 1), yet Day embraces Rossellini precisely because his films reflect the “ruins of postwar Italy” without any reference to the moral ruins of the director’s own life.
The most egregious elevation is that of Robert Bresson. Day asks whether cinema itself can become contemplative, and answers by praising Bresson’s “austere” style, his “silence,” and his famous line “All is grace.” The author compares Bresson’s films to “contemplation, monastic silence, lectio divina.” This is blasphemous confusion. The contemplation practiced by the saints is a supernatural act of the intellect and will, elevated by grace and directed toward God as He is in Himself. A film, no matter how restrained, cannot be an act of contemplation; it is a material object of the external senses. To equate the two is to reduce the supernatural life to an aesthetic experience, a characteristic error of the modernist “interiorist” approach condemned in *Pascendi Dominici gregis*. Bresson’s films, which often depict despair, suicide, and the absence of grace, are praised for their “spiritual seriousness,” but the article never mentions that Bresson’s Jansenist‑tinged pessimism is incompatible with the Catholic doctrine of hope and the universality of redemption.
The article’s central thesis—that Catholicism’s deepest contribution to cinema is “a way of seeing” rather than explicit religious content—is a direct assault on the missionary mandate of the Church. Our Lord commanded the Apostles: “Go ye into the whole world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). The Church has always understood that her primary task is not to cultivate a vague sacramental sensibility but to teach the truths necessary for salvation. Pius XI in *Quas Primas* declares that Christ’s kingdom “extends not only to Catholic nations … but also to all non‑Christians, so that most truly the entire human race is subject to the authority of Jesus Christ.” The reign of Christ is not a poetic mood; it is a juridical reality to which all men and nations must submit. By reducing Catholicism to a “way of seeing,” Day effectively denies the social kingship of Christ and replaces it with a private, interiorized aesthetic.
The omission of any reference to the crisis in the Church since 1958 is deafening. The article discusses Hollywood’s Golden Age as if the conciliar revolution had never occurred. There is no mention of the New Mass, the demolition of the sacramental system, the silencing of the Church’s dogmatic teaching, or the rise of the very “faith‑based” genre that Day implicitly dismisses. The modern “faith‑based” film industry is a direct product of the post‑conciliar desertion of doctrinal clarity; it is a sentimental, naturalistic substitute for the supernatural faith that once animated Catholic art. By treating the Golden Age as a lost paradise of Catholic sensibility, Day ignores the root cause of its disappearance: the apostasy of the men who occupied the Vatican after the death of Pius XII.
The article’s treatment of suffering and grace further exposes its naturalism. Day writes that “suffering is not meaningless” and that “redemption remains possible,” but he never defines redemption or its necessary conditions. Is it the redemption of the whole man, body and soul, through baptism and the state of grace? Or is it a vague psychological healing? The answer is clear from the context: redemption is a narrative arc in a film, not the actual deliverance from sin and death won by Christ on the Cross. The author’s silence on the supernatural destiny of man is the gravest accusation against his thesis. A cinema that omits the reality of hell, the necessity of sanctifying grace, and the existence of the one true Church is not Catholic; it is a humanitarian counterfeit.
The concluding call to “recover a sacramental way of seeing” is a call to return to a world that no longer exists—and that, in any case, was never as Catholic as the author imagines. The true Catholic way of seeing is not a mood but a judgment: “For what doth it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Matt. 16:26). The Church has always taught that the purpose of human life is the beatific vision, not the cultivation of aesthetic sensibility. The films Day admires may contain natural virtues, but without the supernatural form of charity, they are ultimately vain. The task of the Catholic is not to baptize Hollywood but to convert the world to Christ the King.
In sum, the article is a typical product of the post‑conciliar mentality: it reduces the Catholic faith to a cultural sensibility, ignores the doctrinal and moral teaching of the pre‑conciliar Magisterium, and treats the arts as a substitute for the supernatural life. It is not a defense of Catholic cinema but a symptom of the very modernism that has laid waste to the Church’s cultural inheritance. The true Catholic film is not one that feels “sacramental” but one that explicitly proposes the truths of the faith for the salvation of souls. Anything less is a betrayal of the Incarnate Word.
Source:
Can Cinema Itself Be Catholic? (ncregister.com)
Date: 26.06.2026