The Pledge
In 1933, Archbishop John McNicholas composed a membership pledge for the Legion, which read in part:
- I wish to join the Legion of Decency, which condemns vile and unwholesome moving pictures. I unite with all who protest against them as a grave menace to youth, to home life, to country and to religion. I condemn absolutely those salacious motion pictures which, with other degrading agencies, are corrupting public morals and promoting a sex mania in our land. … Considering these evils, I hereby promise to remain away from all motion pictures except those which do not offend decency and Christian morality.
The pledge was revised in 1934:
- I condemn all indecent and immoral motion pictures, and those which glorify crime or criminals. I promise to do all that I can to strengthen public opinion against the production of indecent and immoral films, and to unite with all who protest against them. I acknowledge my obligation to form a right conscience about pictures that are dangerous to my moral life. I pledge myself to remain away from them. I promise, further, to stay away altogether from places of amusement which show them as a matter of policy.
In 1938, the league requested that the Pledge of the Legion of Decency be administered each year on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (December 8).
Read more about this topic: National Legion Of Decency
Famous quotes containing the word pledge:
“My administration is pledged to follow the policies of Mr. Roosevelt in this regard, and while that pledge does not involve me in any obligation to carry them out unless I have Congressional authority to do so, it does require that I take every step and exert every legislative influence upon Congress to enact the legislation which shall best subserve the purposes indicated.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“I am heartily tired of this life of bondage, responsibility, and toil. I wish it was at an end.... We are both physically very healthy.... Our tempers are cheerful. We are social and popular. But it is one of our greatest comforts that the pledge not to take a second term relieves us from considering it. That was a lucky thing. It is a reform—or rather a precedent for a reform, which will be valuable.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)