The Church in Asia and America has taken up the cudgels against what it sees as dangerous products of contemporary culture and - in the world's largest democracy - it has actually won, writes Anto Akkara. India's bishops have successfully lobbied the country's censorship board to add a disclaimer to the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age. The film, directed by an Indian, Shekhar Kapur, was released in India on Sunday with a "health warning" put forward by the bishops that it was "not based on accurate history".

"We are happy that the Censor Board responded positively to our demand," Fr Babu Joseph, spokesperson for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India (CBCI) said on Tuesday.

The CBCI secretary-general, Archbishop Stanislaus Fernandes of Gandhinagar, had written to the National Censor Board that the film "unnecessarily targets the Catholic Church and its leaders" and scholars and historians across the world had described the film as an "anti-papal travesty".

Meanwhile the Huron District Catholic School Board in Ontario, Canada, has removed copies of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass from school libraries ahead of the release of the film based on the book. In the United States, the New York-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has spearheaded a campaign arguing that the film and Pullman's books "bash Christianity and promote atheism to kids".