Ball-Playing Virgin Mary Escapes Censor
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PARIS — A Paris court ruled today that a Jean-Luc Godard film featuring a basketball-playing teen-ager as the Virgin Mary does not warrant censorship or banning, dismissing a case brought last week by two lay Roman Catholic associations.
“Nothing in this film makes it pornographic or particularly obscene,” Magistrate Pierre Drai said.
The associations’ lawyer had argued before an emergency civil court that scenes in “Hail Mary” showing Mary naked with her taxi-driver boyfriend Joseph were deeply offensive to the Catholic Church.
Violence erupted last week in the conservative town of Versailles when militant members of the local Catholic Families Assn. stormed a movie theater where the film was being shown.
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