Catholicism and Cinema: Modernization and Modernity

The book addresses the Catholic Church’s cinema-related activity, focusing on the Italian case during the period between the 1930s and the 1960s. During these years, the Church played a central role in the political and cultural life of the country and, the cinema being a burgeoning medium at that time, Catholics engaged in a series of interventions aimed at fully and strategically exploiting its potential. The publication of the encyclical Vigilanti Cura (1936), in which Pope Pius XI invited Catholics to influence film production not just through censorship, but also by becoming directly involved in the field of cinema, led to the polarisation of the Church’s approach to cinema: on the one hand, the battle against obscene movies, on the other, the promotion of religious movies. In both cases, the power of cinema to excite the senses of the spectator is involved.