The Office for Film and Broadcasting of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops maintains a motion picture rating system . Under this system, a film can be rated:

• A-I (morally unobjectionable for general patronage);
• A-II (morally unobjectionable for adults and adolescents);
• A-III (morally unobjectionable for adults);
• L (limited adult audience – films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling); or
• O (morally offensive).

Prior to 1982, films adjudged "morally offensive" received either of two ratings, B, which stood for "morally objectionable in part for all," or C, "condemned" (and originally the A category was not subdivided, the age-based segments within it shown above being added later), and until November 1, 2003, the L classification was known as A-IV, which meant "morally unobjectionable for adults, with reservations" and was given to films which, in the Office's judgment, "while not morally offensive in themselves, require caution and some analysis and explanation as a protection to the uninformed against wrong interpretations and false conclusions." Examples of movies which received the A-IV rating include The Exorcist and Saturday Night Fever, two films whose content was seen by many as being exaggerated by the mainstream press, perhaps leading to the wrong interpretations and false conclusions cited in the rating's full description (in 1995 the description was changed to films "which are not morally offensive in themselves but are not for casual viewing").

The office is a direct descendant of the National Legion of Decency, founded in April of 1934; for the first quarter-century or so of its existence, the legion wielded great power in the American motion picture industry, and, though established by Roman Catholic bishops, it originally included many Protestant and even some Jewish clerics as well; however, these latter gradually dropped out, and by the 1960s the organization had become an exclusively Catholic concern. Eventually, the entity was subsumed into the United States Catholic Conference, which later changed its name to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

External link

• Official website