NEW YORK—A strange sight greeted the business crowd as they bustled past Lincoln Center in Manhattan on Oct. 4: a war protest in a time of peace.

About 2,000 Catholics — some having flown in from the Midwest; others having driven from as far away as Virginia — congregated outside the Performing Arts Center to protest the latest offensive in what they call a “culture war.” This time, it's the debut of Dogma, a film that protest organizer Thomas McKenna called “blasphemous against God and the Catholic faith.”

“We feel that the film is wrong, and degrading to our Catholic faith,” McKenna told the Register.

“We feel that blasphemy is an element in today's world used by enemies of the faith to promote perversion and to break down the catholicity of the faithful. If Catholics don't react to these things, it harms them because they grow accustomed to mockery and ridicule. Catholics should stand up for what they believe in.”

While protesters prayed and sang, the New York glitteratti arrived on the scene in limousines. Meanwhile, a small group of counter-protesters jeered at the Catholic crowd.

In many ways it resembled the scene outside the Brooklyn Museum just two days before, where Catholics gathered to protest the now infamous exhibit “Sensation.” Though less publicized, the Dogma protest outdid the 400 “Sensation” protesters.

The film was directed by Chasing Amy and Mallrats director Kevin Smith, a 29-year-old New Jersey native who refers to himself as a practicing Catholic.

It portrays two fallen angels, played by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, who have been banished from heaven to Wisconsin.

They catch wind of a priest in New Jersey who has designated a day for anyone who enters his church to have their sins forgiven. Affleck and Damon decide to go,expecting to reenter heaven through this “loophole” in Catholic dogma. This, the movie suggests, would negate the veracity of God herself (since God is played by singer Alanis Morrisette, known for bringing the “f-word” into wide play on pop radio for the first time).

During production, Affleck was quoted saying that the movie claims “Mary and Joseph had sex, and they had a kid, and therefore there's a female descendant of Christ on Earth … who works at an abortion clinic,” in Hollywood Online.

The movie is meant to be “incendiary,” he said, but claimed that its author, Smith, is “a devoutly religious Catholic,” who stands in “a history of reformers and people who criticize the Church.”

Dogma also shows a nun leaving her vocation to pursue the pleasures of the flesh, and a man thumbing a pornographic magazine in church.

The June 28 issue of Time reports that director Smith planned to re-edit certain scenes in response to the outcry after the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo. The sequences include one in which the pair of angels bullet-spray a board meeting of a large corporation and another in which they kill a group of people outside a church.

Dogma had its worldwide debut at the July Cannes Film Festival in France The film has come under heavy criticsm from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights for its ribald and antagonistic treatment of the Catholic faith. Its original distributor, Disney-owned Miramax, relinquished rights to the film in April, when Disney Chairman Michael Eisner decided it didn't fit his company's family image.

Crossing the Line

“They've crossed the line in what is called entertainment,” said Theresa Fragelli, a protester from Hazleton, Pa. “When it comes to religion they show no respect.”

Fragelli said she joined the protest to demonstrate her love for God and his Church. “When an offense is public, reparation has to be public. It's just like if someone abused your parents. It hurts you. Well, it's the same thing with faith. If you demonstrate that it hurts, you are proving that you love,” Fragelli said.

Maria Becker and her husband drove from Allentown, Pa., for the protest.

Becker said she went because “the culture has become very permissive,” adding, “the sacred is no longer sacred. My husband and I think that if they take that away from our children they will have nothing else.”

Becker said she hadn't seen the film, but had heard about it from some relatives who had. “They said it was violent as well as blasphemous. I was curious to read the script, but then I thought, ‘I don't want to read that junk,” Becker added.

Not Just Catholics

But Stephanie Zacharek, an Arts and Entertainment writer for Salon magazine, an online journal of “news, politics, culture and ideas,” didn't find the film offensive at all.

“I loved the movie,” she said. “It moved me. It's not going to get me back into the Church, but I did have strong feelings about it.”

“It isn't part of freedom of the press to insult someone else's religion.’

On hand for the debut, Zacharek, a lapsed Catholic, said the protesters were “orderly and polite,” but “somewhat misguided.”

“[It] troubled me that they were basing their protests on things they haven't seen or read,” she said, calling the movie a “work of art.”

But the New York protesters aren't the only ones objecting to the film. David Lowenthal, a professor of Political Philosophy at Boston College, told the Register that the film should raise objections “by any sensible person.” Lowenthal, who is Jewish, said people of all religion “should have solidarity on this point.”

“It isn't part of freedom of the press to insult someone else's religion.… There are a bunch of people in Hollywood who enjoy making fun of religion and they enjoy the full support of the courts right now. But that's nonsense if you understand the First Amendment,” Lowenthal said.

“Religion is something people hold dearer than their property and even their lives,” he added.

Police on hand for the demonstration put the number of protesters at about 2,000, but organizer McKenna thought the number was a little higher. “We told them we expected 2,000 to show. They blockaded a section of the street for us, but the crowd grew too large for the blockades. The police had to call for more barriers, but eventually they spilled out of these too,” McKenna said, adding that he thought the number of protesters was closer to 2,500.

McKenna characterized the Monday protest, which ran from late afternoon until a little after six in the evening, as a “prayerful protest rally of reparation.”

“We weren't there to say ‘you are bad. We made it clear that this was not about free speech. We were there as Catholics before God offering prayer for reparation,” McKenna said.