Catholic Church and media

The “Office Catholique Internationale du Cinéma” (OCIC), was founded in 1928. It established itself, during an existence that spanned more than seventy years (1928-2001) as an influential institution that played an important role in setting the Catholic agenda with regards to cinema. The OCIC derived its influence largely from an intermediate position between its member organisations (national and local Catholic organisations active in the field of film production, distribution, exhibition or film criticism and guidance) and the Vatican. This intermediary position, however, was not built overnight. Devising policies that were acceptable to its members from across the world, both on a national and supranational level, was a difficult exercise and the OCIC occasionally had to deal with members and other associated organisations either ignoring OCIC or trying to bypass it and deal directly with the Vatican. Maintaining its relationship with the Vatican meanwhile was a permanent exercise in balancing OCIC’s own independent course and the interests of its members with the obedience to the Holy See, necessary to obtain the Vaticans approval.
Gaining an insight in this balance and how it was maintained is crucial to understanding the OCIC’s history and its position in the field of (Catholic) cinema organisations. In this paper, we will do so by delving into engagements between the OCIC and the Vatican during the postwar period, a pivotal moment in the OCIC-Vatican relations. During this period, the OCIC had to reestablish itself after its wartime inactivity. Due to changing political, societal and religious circumstances, this involved more than just restarting activities. OCIC had to reconfigure/redefine itself in order to stay relevant in the postwar world. Developing its relationship with other national and international film organisations and, more importantly, with the Vatican were crucial to this endeavour. However, the experimental foundation of the Pontificia Commissione per la Cinematografia Didattica e Religiosa, which marked the first instance of direct Vatican interference in the field, put considerable strain on the OCIC-Vatican relations. At a time when OCIC itself was trying to prove its relevance to the outside world, it was suspicious of potential competitors like this new institution within the Papal Curia and fearful of losing its independence. Our focus will be on the period between 1948 and 1952: between the foundation of this commission, and its replacement by a permanent Pontificia Commissione per la Cinematografia.
This case study is based on extensive archival research. We use the OCIC archives (KADOC, Leuven University) as well as a number of archival documents made available through the project “I cattolici e il cinema in Italia tra gli anni ’40 e gli anni ’70” . Our research relies in particular on a set of documents from the archives of the Italian Azione Catolica, and the personal archives of Mgr. Ferdinando Prosperini, who was a prominent figure having held various important positions in the Italian Catholic Action, the OCIC and the Vatican.