Please forgive me if this is totally off the wall, but do actors sin when they make love stories or portray a scene where characters fall in love? I'm leaving aside all the grievously impure trash that's out there with the impure kissing and much worse. Is it sinful for the characters to sit close or touch the other's hand or face? Look fondly at one another and hold a gaze for more than a couple seconds?

Does an audience sin by watching characters fall in love or be in love if it moves his/her heart to joy or happy excitement?

Oh, and if you answer in the affirmative and wouldn't mind adding if it's mortal or venial sin, that would be great. (Not that both aren't cause for a cease and desist.)

Thank you in advance! :)

Thank you Stephen for your response!

Have you obsessed over how many graces and blessings you'll receive from praying the Rosary reverently, or are you more worried about how to justify watching Hollywood's filth?

Believe you me I have absolutely zero interest in watching Hollywood's filth. I don't own a television set and refuse to watch any movie that isn't endorsed by pious traditional Catholics. I'm not trying to skate God's laws, but dutifully follow His holy will.

I intentionally left the question broad, but I'll be more than happy to let you know the root of it. I am required to see four specified plays for a class in school. Honestly, I would love more than anything to stay home and be alone with God. I loathe any and every affection in me that is not purely for Him. I don't want to do anything that would hint at the slightest immodesty and I also don't want to give my consent to others acting in such a way.

I wanted to know if the correct action would be for me to refuse to partake in any plays, skits, etc. that might contain something that could be an occasion of sin or if I were overreacting. If I had to go and the things I mentioned weren't sinful I'd still have chosen to turn away during such moments and have absolute recourse to God: since God will have no rival in the affections of our hearts. (St. Alphonsus de Ligouri)

I think the first half of your question quoted above might have been rhetorical, but it is certainly something to "obsess" over. The graces and indulgences attached to prayers should encourage us to be as reverent as possible in prayer. That we can gain a plenary indulgence for a poor soul in purgatory from the recitation of the Rosary astounds me! It makes me try and pray with all my miserable might to be in a state that I am able to gain plenary indulgences and further to say a Rosary worthy of the indulgence it merits. But I digress...

I just thought of a good example to help clarify my point. It doesn't seem like there would be a situation where an actor performing a love scene WOULDN'T be committing at least SOME kind of sin. However, I can think of an example that can separate the distinction I am attempting to make.

You see, a thing can be intrinsically evil, in and of itself, or it could be evil due to intentions or circuмstances. Normally, love scenes that are acted out have the intention of arousing the audience and getting more money for it; sometimes even the actors are aroused themselves. This, of course, is a sin. A thing can be intrinsically evil if it is a perversion in and of itself; e.g. burglary.

Acting, however, is not evil in and of itself, and I can think of one example in which portraying a love scene wouldn't be sinful. Imagine a young couple getting married and having the most wonderful honeymoon. Ten years down the road, they decide they want to live those moments again, but realized they hadn't filmed it. So they decide to act it out and put it on camera. They do all the things that you see in modern movies, like kissing, making romantic gestures, etc. But they only intend to show it to themselves and watch it on their anniversary or something.

Clearly, this isn't a sin, despite how silly it is. Acting out a love scene, intrinsically, is not an evil thing; nothing wrong with a couple acting out their own marriage or honeymoon. It's only evil when the intentions or the situation doesn't call for it (e.g. showing it to teenagers).

Subito:

Did you read what I said? I wrote that CLASSICAL theater, of which the works of Shakespeare are certainly a part, is not the same as modern theater, which is the kind of thing our friend the OP was referring to.

The fact is that it's very easy to fall into occasions of sin when dealing with the arts, because any time the expressed goal and purpose of an artistic work is not the glory of God in Christ Our Lord, there is room for the Devil to sway the minds and hearts of the creators of the work and pervert them.

I've said it several times now... we have no excuse when we decry the lack of heroic sanctity in the world today. We are simply not shouldering our crosses daily; we are 'at ease in Zion', as the Scriptures say.

Let me put it this way... I hope this is a little 'nugget' that's worth remembering:

God is not going to supply the grace of heroic sanctity where ordinary human submission is lacking. No amount of ASSENT to the truths of the Church will EVER bring about sanctity; only ACTION according to those truths will.

St. Paul of the Cross, St. Gemma Galgani and others were not at once permitted to do everything that was in their hearts to do for God. St. Francis of Assisi was challenged by the Pope himself to question whether it was possible for others to live according to the Rule he proposed. St. Therese of Lisieux had to suffer the disdain of her superior in order that she could discover her 'Little Way'. Many other saints have had obstacles to what felt like burning, even maddening desire to glorify God with their lives. No matter what they faced, however, they soldiered on and made small choice after small choice and little sacrifice after little sacrifice.

We, in this day and age, are faced with more and more sources of temptation than anyone in history heretofore. Why wonder, then, why there are no saints to be seen in the modern world? It's simply because we have become accustomed to the idea that sacrifice means giving up the things that make us like the unconverted world. The problem is, however, that we never should have been like them from the first. The kinds of sacrifices and mortifications that will mark God's saints in this modern day will NOT be denials of the world's pleasures, but rather denials of even things that the world thinks are ALREADY too hard to bear.

In short (for instance, as examples only), don't listen to ONLY choir music... throw out the stereo. Don't just read trad Catholic magazines... read ONLY your Bible and devotional books. Don't just abstain from fleshmeat on Fridays and holydays... stop buying any food you don't cook yourself, so you learn how lazy your habits have become.

There's a reason that St. Benedict, St. Francis, St. Dominic and others combined their Rules of spiritual life with practical orders concerning work and domestic life (where applicable). It's because when we 'get spiritual', we tend to think that we can be a 'Franciscan' in spirit and attitude while our daily lives still mirror those of the unconverted.

The question is not whether we should AVOID this or that... the question is whether we have exhausted every avenue of growth in grace and sanctity that we possibly can before we chase after the delights of this world, no matter how innocent some of them may seem.

Our Lord said to seek FIRST His Kingdom and His righteousness... have we? Or have we contented ourselves, like the Protestants, with KNOWING and ASSENTING TO facts and figures while living lives of shallow and passionless agreement rather than lives of crucified abandonment to Christ?

It pains me that there are Catholics out in this world who are raging against the SSPX or against CMRI or against whatever while I have yet to read line number one from any of the guilty parties about encouraging each other in Our Lady's Rosary, or in making good confession, or in gaining the blessed indulgences available to us through pious prayers and acts.

St. John Vianney, patron of faithful and holy priests, pray for us and inspire zealous Fathers for us to imitate.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, triumph soon.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

If it is gratuitous or for provocation then it is sinful.

But if they do a scene where intimacy is only implied, then the screen fades to black, then reopens with "Later, that same morning..." That's a little bit more ambiguous but I would say that it would probably still be sinful.

I think we need to be careful or we will end up condemning Shakespearian plays such as Romeo and Juliet as sinful for the actors.

Since you mention Shakespeare:

The Occult Shakespeare (part 2 of 3)

Thank you everyone for your comments!

And as to whether or not you should go, I say go (for obedience sake), but bring ear plugs and close your eyes when you feel the need.

Not sure you care, but I took your advice. Honestly, I know how important obedience is, but I'm really not sure God was pleased with it in this instance. The first performance was Shakespeare. Not terrible, but still had to overt my eyes and pray a bit.

The second... there aren't words to describe the crass vulgarity. There is no question Satan had a tremendous hand in it. My head was down for all but about four seconds and my fingers spent the majority of their time in my ears. Without the grace of God, the image of Mary and the Child Jesus in my lap and the Rosary on my lips, there's no way I'd have made it. Still kind of doubt I made the right decision in not leaving though.

But we know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good. I'm posting this because I'd really like to ask that in your charity, you all join me in begging and pleading with our Blessed Mother for the conversions of all involved and the triumph of Christ the King. At this rate I think our prayers are the only good thing that can come from my experience.

As St. Augustine so eloquently put it,

Think not, therefore, that the wicked are in this world without a purpose, and that God worketh no good out of them. Every wicked man liveth, either that he may himself be corrected, or that through him some good man may be exercised.

Commentary on the 54th Psalm

Be exercised my dear friends in Christ!

Happy Feast Day Christ the King!