Protest Delays Wide Release of ‘Priest’ : Religion: Miramax bows to Catholic group and reschedules controversial film’s general distribution till after Easter.

Relenting in the face of protests from a Catholic group, a Disney-owned film company agreed Friday to postpone the general release of the controversial movie “Priest” from Good Friday to three days after Easter in much of the nation.

The movie, in which priests are depicted as having sex with women and men, was criticized by William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League, who protested that the original national release date, April 14, the day that Catholics and Protestants observe as the anniversary of Christ’s crucifixion, was a deliberate effort to “put salt in the wounds” of believers.

Although an office of the U.S. Catholic bishops has said the movie is not anti-Catholic, Donohue called it an insult to Catholics because, he said, the priests in the film are depicted as suffering from a “depraved condition as a direct consequence of church teachings.”

Disney executives in Burbank referred all queries about the film to Miramax Films, a subsidiary based in New York.

Miramax spokesman Mark Gill defended the movie Friday, noting it had won praise at international film festivals, and said the company “was surprised by the vehemence” of the protest over the release date, but would change it.

The film, which opened in Los Angeles and New York Friday ahead of showings in the rest of the country, will now be released on April 7 in 10 other large cities and on April 19 in the remainder of the United States, Gill said.

The change was “an important step,” said Donohue, whose New York-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has no official church connection but claims to have a membership of about 150,000.

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But Donohue said he still wants Michael Eisner, chief executive officer of Disney, to dissociate the company, which is traditionally known for wholesome family-oriented entertainment, from the movie.

When Disney purchased Miramax in 1993, then-Disney chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg said that it would remain an independent and autonomous company. But with films such as “The Crying Game” and Madonna’s “Truth or Dare,” Miramax added a sexually provocative arm to the Disney behemoth.

Donohue said in an interview that if he gets no response from Eisner by Monday, “we’ll use every legal method possible to discredit the ‘Snow White’ image of Disney. I think boycotts are over-used and overrated, but I’m talking about stockholder revolts, ad campaigns and so on.”

The U.S. Catholic Conference in Washington, the American bishops’ administrative arm, issued no comment on the movie except to distribute a generally critical review of “Priest” by its Office for Film and Broadcasting.

The review said reactions by Catholics to the flawed, “decidedly unsentimental” film could vary--that it might inspire some Catholics’ to greater compassion for “the difficulties of a celibate life” while striking others as plainly offensive. At the same time, the review added, “any movie which treats the Catholic faith as seriously as this one does can hardly be said to be anti-Catholic.”

Directed by Antonia Bird and written by Jimmy McGovern, “Priest” was originally created for British television. Bird, a Catholic, has said that she spent two months discussing moral issues with priests in Liverpool and London to gather insights for the film.

As summarized by Times Film Critic Kenneth Turan in a review published Friday, many “incendiary areas” of Catholicism are aired--”the torments of a homosexual priest, the regrets of a non-celibate heterosexual colleague, the nightmare of incest, the agony of wanting to break the inviolate seal of the confessional to right a terrible wrong.”

But, Turan wrote, the movie’s approach “is depressingly simplistic and predigested.”

The Catholic League’s adverse reaction to “Priest” and other movies with potentially offensive elements differs from the approach taken by some other Catholic organizations concerned with moral values in the entertainment media.

“I have no doubt about Donohue’s sincerity, but I think his campaign will backfire,” said TV writer-producer Ron Austin of Studio City.

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Austin is a leader of Catholics in Media, a local group which encourages sensitive media treatments of moral and religious themes and has the backing of Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony.

“I think Donohue is falling into the ‘Last Temptation (of Christ)’ trap,” Austin said, recalling the publicity generated by religious-group protests that benefited the 1987 movie of that name at the box office.

“The public clearly wants movies, TV shows and books about religion today, but if we (the religious) become too thin-skinned, then we won’t get many films that deal with the subject.”