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Excommunication of actors by the Catholic Church


Excommunication of actors was both literal and metaphorical practice of demeaning the reputation of actors as individuals or of their profession as the actors as well as refusing to recognize them as the individuals deserving the benefits of the religious rites under the Catholic customs. Many bishops, priests, and monks have strongly condemned theatrical amusements, and they even declared the actors to be 'instruments of Satan', 'a curse to the Church', and 'beguiling unstable souls'. The Roman Catholic Church believed theatre caused people to “indulge themselves in amusements which its fascinations interfere with the prosecution of the serious work of daily life. Anything pleasing or appealing to the lower nature, the ‘sensual appetites,’ were considered as temptations as dictated in the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Lead us not into temptation,’” which one must avoid in order to lead an ideal Christian life. One must eat and drink for strength and not for gluttony and drunkenness, rest and sleep to the glory of God and not to sink into indolence and sloth nor to become the masters instead of the servants of the body, and amusements are the most dangerous temptations and the worst impulses from otherwise, "many Christians will relax their ordinary strictness “for the sake of the cause,” and that having once obtained a “taste of the nectar, they will continue to drink it” The Church instead encouraged Christians to strive to please their neighbours for good edification rather than pleasing oneself.

Actors endured the Church’s antitheatrical attacks, which included "social humiliations, aggressive animosity toward their profession and their lowly reputation. Religious attitude toward theatre not only hampered the profession as a whole but also humiliated them as individuals which also affected their family members". In the 1860s, James H. McVicker a theatre professional in Chicago had seen “a child refused admittance to a school, for a reason that the parents were connected with a theatre." In the same decade, the actress Anna Cora Mowatt stated that “being an actress, people considered her and all the actresses as immoral, flighty, silly buffoons who are not to be taken seriously for a moment.” This was due to the low reputation the Roman Catholic Church had given to the theatre. The theatre was affected financially as well because in “many areas, townspeople were scared away from viewing the performances under the Church’s influence, and the difficulty in attracting audiences resulted in inability to pay actors living wages and forced some to abandon their professions.” Travelling troupes, who perform in different cities had experienced difficulties getting help from the locals with the tasks of “finding a place to sleep, suitable place to perform, finding carpenters to build basic set ups, and finding musicians, etc., and the lack of local help was due to religious objection.” The Church also influenced greatly in producing new actors as many parents, worried about the low reputation of the profession, discouraged their children from pursuing the career as an actor. “Noah Ludlow had to flee home to pursue his dream in theatre which his parents disapproved of, and even much later when he got married, his wife’s family pressured him to abandon his career on stage.”


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