Critical Acclaim.

On 30 December 1950 the New York City License Commissioners banned the showing of Roberto Rossellini's award-winning film, The Miracle. The movie, shown in Italian with English subtitles, concerned a half-witted peasant girl, played by Anna Magnani, who is seduced by a man calling himself "Saint Joseph." The girl becomes convinced that she has miraculously conceived her child. Although the New York Film Critics gave The Miracle its award as best foreign film for 1950, the film attracted the attention of the New York archdiocese, which secured a permanent ban from the city's license commission on the grounds that the movie was "officially and personally blasphemous."

Pastoral Condemnation.

A temporary injunction against the ban was secured, but in January 1951 Francis Cardinal Spellman issued a pastoral letter to the two million members of the New York archdiocese. He condemned the film and decreed...