Traditionally the Catholic Church had negative opinion on theatre and acting. Many Church Fathers had explicitly negative views of this form of art since it was mostly associated with ancient theatre deriving from pagan traditions. But we find this view also much later in Church history, for example the Catholic Church in France refused the actors sacraments and Christian burial (Adrienne Lecouvreour, a famous 18th century actress, was refused a Catholic burial due to her profession, the Catholic Church also very reluctantly agreed to give burial to Voltaire).
As we all know, today the Church does not have such a negative view of acting, theatre etc., and I suppose most of us enjoy watching a good movie or play at theatre (personally I'm a great fan of opera). John Paul II in his Letter to Artists from 1999 wrote explicitly that those who have "artistic vocation - as poet, writer, sculptor, architect, musician, actor and so on feel at the same time the obligation not to waste this talent but to develop it, in order to put it at the service of their neighbour and of humanity as a whole."
Now, we know that a wide-scale development of cinema and its influence emerged more or less at the same time as modernism arose in the Church and found expression in Vatican II and following pontificates of modernists. Therefore, I wonder whether the current permissive (if not openly positive) attitude of the Church towards film, theatre, acting etc. is:
a) result of modernist aggiornamento and Church's opening to the world, similar as in the cases of false ecuмenism, religious liberty, de facto acceptance of divorce through bogus "annulments" etc.?
b) or is it rather is it a genuine recognition of positive aspects of these forms of art by the Church within time, which to some extent modifies historical negative Catholic view on these subjects?