Catholics Have Their Own House to Clean : Morality: In his call for a movie code, Cardinal Mahony cedes to Hollywood the role of shaping minds and hearts.

A couple of years ago, the Roman Catholic cardinal of New York hired the public relations firm of Hill & Knowlton to help him in the media wars over abortion. That a prince of the church would no longer trust his own spiritual authority, that the preacher in his pulpit needed a public-relations firm--here was evidence of a church that had lost its confidence.

Several evenings ago, in a news clip on “Entertainment Tonight,” there was the cardinal of Los Angeles, Roger M. Mahony, proposing a new code for movies and television. The cardinal wants Hollywood to police itself--to remove from the screen, big and small, such things as nudity and suggestive dancing, to forgo the glamorization of notorious criminals and the showing of policemen dying at the feet of outlaws.

The cardinal was, in effect, conceding to Hollywood its influence over our moral lives. It is Hollywood, the cardinal was saying, not the church, that holds the imagination of the American public.

The cardinal was soft-spoken. I was disappointed. I wanted him to name names, to go after his fellow Catholic, that Austrian body-builder who has made millions with high-tech mayhem.

There is an ancient, a holy tradition of the prophet, dark and ragged, raging against the sinful city. I would have liked to have seen Cardinal Mahony on television overturning a few Calvin Klein cologne bottles or trashing a few Madonna videos. Better, I wanted the cardinal to take on “Entertainment Tonight,” to say something about its influence on the moral tone of the country. But the cardinal was polite. (The segment that followed was a generously photographed preview of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue.)

The cardinal must be polite. He has to go to banquets, after all, with the stuffed shirts and the fat cats who run the entertainment business. And perhaps the communications experts at the chancellery advised him that television is best used--so the experts say--with a gentle voice.

The cardinal’s code for film and television would be voluntary. But out from the canyons of Hollywood come the cries of First Amendment protection. Industry spokesman Jack Valenti, he of the silk tie and the silk suit who otherwise is never seen except at the Academy Awards, offers: “I would not try to tell creative people how to write their story any more than I would try to instruct Hemingway, Beethoven or Picasso. . . .”

The cardinal was right: There is real evil emanating from the television and movie screen. And nearly everyone in America will tell you that something is wrong in America. Forget the problem of Japan! America is losing its soul. And our children know it.

The problem is what to do about this loss of the soul. I speak here as a Catholic, a faithful son of the church, but also a son who is dismayed by the lack of confidence and the collapse of spiritual authority of my church.

The concession to Hollywood’s influence implied by the cardinal’s proposal is so vast that it takes my breath away. There is implied, too, an admission that the church cannot influence how Americans regard sexuality or violence--that it is Hollywood’s job. Is it impertinent to ask the cardinal what our church has been doing?

Quite clearly the church has lost its authority for many of its own members. On sexual matters, for example--on birth control, homosexuality, divorce--we are more apt to heed the pop psychologist on Oprah Winfrey’s show than the advice of the priest at the nearby rectory.

I think of the sexual scandals of recent years within the rectory, and of the church’s refusal to acknowledge their implication. But the problem of faltering authority is a much larger one, finally: We are losing our faith in our own faith.

Instead of conceding to Paramount Pictures or to the Fox network our teaching influence, I urge Cardinal Mahony to inspire me and our fellow Catholics out of our lethargy. Do not bother the Hollywood producer with talk of a code; better to minister to his lonely children in Beverly Hills or to the addicts and the teen-age prostitutes on Hollywood Boulevard.

Religion is nothing if it is only finger- wagging. A church is nothing if it is only censors and scissors. I cannot forget that, at a time of moral collapse, the most influential Catholic in the world is a tiny nun who sits with the dying and waits with the dying in faraway India.