The increasing number of extravaganza movies on religious topics raise a serious question for the churches that endorse them. These films offer valuable publicity and good will benefits, but it is quite possible to both popularize something and empty it of meaning at the same time. Hollywood mixtures of the Sacred and the Super-Colossal often blend into a garish circus atmosphere with sacrelegious overtones.

While Miracle of Fatima is a special attempt to capitalize on Roman Catholic movie-goers, it also represents this current trend in religious pictures: It tries to "sell" a religious theme by sensationalizing it (as "Spectacular," "Staggering," "Breathtaking"), and disguises some tired melodrama with a fresh set of symbols.

The miracle here is the appearance of the Virgin Mary at Fatima, Portugal during 1917. She appeared before a group of small children on six successive months and delivered various messages about the coming war. On her final visit, the sun is supposed to have rotated and thrown out rays of colored lights. The unhappy position of one of the children, torn between belief in her vision and the incredulity of her parcuts, is past of this legend.

But in attempting to provide Sentiment, Warner Brothers has re-made this child in the image of a Margaret O'Brien. She lisps heavily, rolls her eyes like billiard balls, and weeps her way through the most agonizing mandlin of bedroom scenes. It becomes impossible to identify with her as a human being, and the problem of conflict becomes as unreal as she is.

Having pepped up the miracle with Sentiment, Warner Brothers now adds Sensation. The gimmick is a completely irrelevant side plot about some scheming Red politicians who twirl their mustaches viciously and torture little children. I suppose the idea was to offer a double-barreled attraction, timeless religion and current politics. But these ridiculous "Aha-My-Proud-Beauty" villains remove any lingering sense of honesty from the film.

Even the most delicate religious effects are handled in this manner. The Virgin Mary comes to earth accompanied by great crashed of thunder, zaps of lightning, blasts of organ music, and finally springs up like the Cheshire cat. When it comes time for the actual miracle to take place, Warner's has the sky change colors as rapidly as a drugstore juke box, and the sun comes diving down toward the earth with appropriate sound effects. This "improvement" only makes the improbable seem impossible.

So by mauling the religious theme of Fatima through the phoncy process of sentimentalizing and sensationalizing, the picture reduces it to an empty plot and a series of gimmicks. While not actually secrelegious, this is certainly irreverent when one of these gimmicks is the Virgin Mary.

It is an interesting comment on the state of religion in this country that this film has been hailed as a "milestone" and endorsed from the pulpit by an Archbishop's letter.