This is a passage from a 1927 pastoral letter from the Irish bishops: "The evil one is ever setting his snares for unwary feet. At the moment, his traps for the innocent are chiefly the dance hall, the bad book, the indecent paper, the motion picture, the immodest fashion in female dress – all of which tend to destroy the virtues characteristic of our race."
I can't even guess how often I've encountered this passage reproduced in various books and articles. It's always presented as Exhibit A of the Church's intolerance, puritanism, authoritarianism, and what have you. Even Catholic sources tend to quote it in this light. (Significantly, perhaps, I can't find the whole pastoral letter anywhere, though I haven't tried very hard-- just that one passage in isolation.)
Was it so ridiculous after all? Yes, films and newspapers from the 1920s would probably strike us as very innocent and even quaint today. But it also seems impossible to deny that mass media led to a liberalisation of morals, however you take that fact. It didn't come out of nowhere and surely it wasn't dramatic in its early stages. The very fact that what disturbed the bishops in 1927 now seems laughable might say something, and not what it's always assumed to say.
Are you kidding me? It is as relevant today as it was back then. The trick, as it always has been, is to redefine the standard of what is "bad" from God's perfect desire for us instead to something man-based. "Its not that bad!" is the eternal rallying cry of the deceiver in everything of license as we happily placate ourselves in the march toward Hell.
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