RELIGION / JOHN DART : Catholics Debate Entertainment Media’s Treatment of the Issues

Last fall, Catholics in Media, based in Studio City, honored “Picket Fences” as the most outstanding television program of 1992-93 for its thought-provoking way of handling moral issues.

This spring, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights blasted the CBS series, saying two programs were rife with anti-Catholic bigotry.

The sharply divergent Catholic responses to the Emmy-winning series arise partly from the fact that Catholics in Media is a 2-year-old group of entertainment professionals trying a positive tack--encouraging and pointing out worthy efforts by their peers in Hollywood, while the league is a 22-year-old “media watchdog” organization formed to combat perceived slurs against Catholicism.

Formed partly to offer mutual spiritual support, Catholics in Media’s 20-member executive committee is also focused on pumping new life into the annual Communion breakfast (now a luncheon) for Los Angeles-area Catholics in the entertainment business. The next one is scheduled for Oct. 9 at the Beverly Hilton hotel.

But the fledgling organization also gives the Catholic Church--whose defunct Legion of Decency issued film ratings that made it a Hollywood force from the 1930s to the early 1960s--the potential for new, more cordial access.

Following informal contacts with industry officials last year, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony’s nuanced pastoral letter on films and television affirmed principles of creative freedom while urging responsible, enriching entertainment.

Television director Jack Shea, who co-founded Catholics in Media with his wife, Patt, a comedy writer, said: “Too many churches, not just Catholic churches, have a tendency to be negative in their approach to films and television.

“We think there is a lot of good out there as well as the not so good,” he said. The Sheas have worked on many of Norman Lear’s series.

Not only that, Patt Shea said, but television programs today seem to be incorporating more talk about religion and more characters involved in spiritual matters than they did, say, five years ago.

“You just have to watch ‘Northern Exposure’ to see all the religious themes and the integration of spirituality in a program like ‘NYPD Blue,’ ” she said.

Yet the Sheas are bucking prevailing opinion outside the entertainment business.

Patt’s impression appears to conflict with a report made public in March by a conservative watchdog group, the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Va., which said that during 1,000 hours of prime-time TV entertainment in 1993, religious issues came up only 116 times and mostly in an unfavorable light.

The center’s chairman, L. Brent Bozell III, a Catholic, said he was cautiously optimistic about a shift in attitude after “L.A. Law” added a conservative Christian lawyer to the firm and CBS scheduled the series “Christy,” about a devout schoolteacher in Appalachia. “L.A. Law” was eventually canceled, but “Christy” producer Ken Wales, after the trial run of six shows, was asked for 13 more episodes as a replacement candidate in the fall schedule.

An emerging ease with religious issues is also sensed by Jack Shea, who has directed “The Jeffersons,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Designing Women” and “704 Hauser Street.”

“I think for many years that networks were afraid to touch religious stories because they were afraid of offending people--they didn’t want to create controversy,” he said.

That doesn’t mean that religious institutions and practices are now going to receive favored treatment, he said. “I think it’s OK to have characters criticize religion as long as they’re fair about it and it’s spread around to different religious groups,” he added.

The Sheas did not comment directly on the criticism that the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights aimed at “Picket Fences,” except to say they felt the shows in the 1992-93 season (which won the Emmy last year for best dramatic series and was among the 1994 nominees announced Thursday) contained intelligent conversation on difficult subjects.

“They did not pick easy solutions,” said Patt Shea, whose credits include “All in the Family,” “Happy Days,” “Lou Grant” and “The Golden Girls.”

The Catholic League, based in New York City under new President William Donohue, termed the “Picket Fences” episode on April 29 “a textbook case of anti-Catholicism in the media” and accused writer-producer David Kelley of bigotry. The story, which included dialogue critical of the Catholic Church’s requirement that priests be celibate, included a priest who almost loses his parish over the revelation that he masturbates using women’s shoes.

Kelley wrote a long rebuttal in which “he defended himself and said (the depictions) were not due to anti-Catholic bigotry,” Donohue said. The two may meet to discuss the issue further in Los Angeles or New York, he said.

Kelley was unavailable for comment, a representative said.

Hollywood producer-writer Ron Austin, a member of the Catholics in Media executive committee, defends Kelley’s right of free expression in Sunday’s National Catholic Register newspaper while agreeing with Donohue that the story line showed “gross insensitivity.”

Austin, best known for “Charley’s Angels” and “Mission Impossible,” said he hopes that bad taste won’t extinguish hope that religion will be portrayed as an influence in most Americans’ lives.

“Let us pray for Kelley and the network chiefs that they might discover the virtue of, if not tolerance, at least civility,” Austin writes.

Literary agent Christine Foster, a network and studio executive for 18 years and a member of the Catholics in Media executive committee, said specific criticisms of “Picket Fences” may have some merit but do little to outweigh the program’s qualities.

“I would also say to a lot of people out there: ‘Lighten up!’ ” she added.

“Catholicism has a sense of humor. Jesus had a sense of humor. I don’t expect I’m going to agree with every scene or conclusion on a program,” said Foster, who was an Immaculate Heart nun for five years before entering the entertainment industry.

Members of Catholics in Media do not all agree on specific cases or sociopolitical issues, but they tend to take their religion seriously, the Sheas said.

The couple’s hillside home displays a collection of angel figures, and family room and bedroom windows offer a view of St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church in Sherman Oaks, where they are active parishioners.

They were chosen by Mahony and the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities to make a video aimed at teen-agers promoting alternatives to abortion.

The 20-minute narrative shows a young women being talked out of an abortion by her fetus (or her conscience), depicted through special effects as a floating ball of light. The video, shown at last year’s World Youth Day in Denver, is being distributed by the bishops’ committee.

Catholics in Media leaders said they hope to hold a short spiritual retreat each year. This spring’s retreat drew about three dozen industry people.

“It is remarkable how closely we have bonded as a group,” said Ralph Sariego, vice president for television production at Universal Pictures, a parishioner at Our Lady of Malibu Church.

Religious faith is a subject rarely broached in studios or network offices, “because people tend to be shy and protective about their beliefs,” Sariego said. “But there are many, many good individuals in the business, and sometimes you will find agnostics and atheists showing more kindness than believers.”

The idea hasn’t caught on yet, but Catholics in Media organizers have urged that parishes on both sides of the Santa Monica Mountains help form similar groups of Catholics in the entertainment profession.

“In the television business, where I spend most of my time,” Foster said, “I feel a particular need to give and receive spiritual nourishment. We all face questions of ethics, right and wrong, making or breaking a deal. One needs faith and a spiritual foundation to deal with these things.”