TORONTO - At the Toronto International Film Festival last September, thousands of words poured nonstop from Kevin Smith, the director of the raunchy ''Clerks,'' as he passionately defended his latest controversial movie, ''Dogma,'' which opens Friday in Boston. The film, which stars Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, two Cambridge boys made good, has infuriated some Catholic groups who see it as an attack on their religion. Billed as a ''comic fantasia,'' the film is about two fallen angels (Affleck and Damon) who seek a way to return to paradise by exploiting a loophole in church law. The trouble is, if they're successful, it also means the end of the human race, and thus a good angel (Alan Rickman) is sent from heaven to convince a wavering Catholic named Bethany (Linda Fiorentino) to stop them. Chris Rock, Salma Hayek, and Alanis Morissette also appear in a story that is mind-boggling in its complexity.

Some have called the film blasphemous, but Smith, 29, insists that it isn't. ''When you distill the absolute message down,'' he says, ''the film is saying `Let's not forget why we go to church.' It's so easy to get caught up in the politics of any religion, in this instance Catholicism, that you forget that you're not there to debate abortion, say, or whether gays should be able to worship with us. You're there to celebrate your faith, to celebrate Christ. People say abortion has everything to do with God because God doesn't want people to die. But it seems like God wants a lot of people to die, because people die all the time. God is actually pro-death, I think.''

Smith also says the movie isn't anti-Catholic. ''The church isn't all corrupt, but it was created by a bunch of men, human beings, who are fallible, so there are bound to be kinks in the system.''

As the director of ''Clerks'' and ''Chasing Amy,'' Smith is no stranger to controversy, and he's convinced that Catholic groups have attacked him because of these earlier films. ''Reading that the movie was anti-God and anti-faith was hurtful to me, because that's not the movie I made. They just assume that because you couch a lot of your work in profanity or that you've made a movie about a man who falls in love with a lesbian, they know what you're all about. Let's face it, the church has become a kind of business, but that's the worst thing I say. It just so happens that I surround it with a lot of profanity. .... I mean, at the end of the day, `Dogma' kind of upholds most Catholic doctrine.''

Smith still attends weekly Mass, primarily, he says, because he's so grateful. ''I've been really blessed. I have a really good career - I'm not laying brick, not digging graves, not working in the post office for 30 years and hating it, like my father. And it pays well if you learn to do it right, which I haven't learned yet. I have a beautiful wife, we have a beautiful child, I've had no tragedy ever befall me. I have both my parents, they're still married, I've never been torn asunder by a horrible disease, I've got great brothers and sisters and friends. So I feel that an hour a week is not too much to pop in and go `Thank you, and can we keep this up?'''

A DISNEY ANGLE

The director is convinced that his biggest antagonist, the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, has protested the film because it was originally made for Miramax, which was subsequently forced by its owner, Disney, to sell it. (The film is being released by Lions Gate.)

''The Catholic League loves going after Disney because that's how you make headlines. They complained that Michael Eisner wouldn't let them read the script beforehand. Hey, if you're really interested in reading the script, and talking about the movie with someone connected with it, I live in Red Bank, N.J., and I don't go anywhere. I'm in the phone book, and I have a comic book store where you can find me most times.'' Smith is also bothered that no one at the Catholic League has yet seen the movie, yet officials there have felt free to criticize it.

Reached by telephone at Catholic League headquarters in New York, Patrick Scully, the group's director of communications, said, ''We don't like the film because it rips the Catholic Church and is blatantly offensive to Catholics. Kevin Smith doesn't get a free pass because he's a Catholic. There are plenty of self-hating Catholics in the world. And this is not censorship, either. Smith has a right to make a film like this if he wants to, but we also have a right to bring the light of truth to it and protest about the content.''

Scully concedes that Disney's high profile was a factor in choosing to protest the film. ''If it was going to play in an art house in SoHo, and nobody was going to see it, sure, then we might not bother. But this is a big production with a high profile, and we speak out when we feel the need is there.'' And while Scully admits that no one at the league has seen the film, he doesn't think it's necessary, because they read the script beforehand, though he's vague about where they got it. 'We're not interested in Ben Affleck's performance or Alanis Morissette's costume but in the content of the movie, which can easily be determined from the script.''

BIG OPENING

Indeed, the film has a higher profile that any other Smith film, since Lions Gate is opening it simultaneously on 1,500 screens, whereas ''Clerks'' was on 50 screens at its widest point, ''Chasing Amy'' on 500, and Smith's second, most commercial film, ''Mallrats,'' was never on more than 700. He admits he's scared. ''Lions Gate said, `Hey, you've got the cast, let's go with 1,500 screens,' but since we do have the cast, if nobody goes to see it, it's because no one is interested. ... I've always thought I had a very finite audience. So I worry sometimes that this is really a niche film - I mean the whole world ain't made up of Catholics.'' Smith says that if the film doesn't perform well its opening weekend, it could disappear immediately.

It's clear from watching the movie that it's the product of a longstanding obsession. The first draft, some 200 pages, was written before ''Clerks'' was released. Smith put off making the film, however, because he was afraid that, coming right after ''Clerks,'' it might be butchered by critics looking for the traditional sophomore slump. ''So we decided to make our second movie `Mallrats' because it was critic-proof, since it was for an audience who doesn't read. Then `Chasing Amy' did well, and people were saying I had matured, so we thought this would be a good time to do a religious topic, with people thinking I was a little more grown up, instead of, it's the `Clerks' guy giving the finger to the church.''

For his next project, Smith says that he will avoid the standard industry logic of always having to make bigger and more expensive films. ''Dogma'' cost just under $10 million, but he believes his next film will be much cheaper, and says he might even shoot it on digital video. ''It seems like a natural progression, but I don't want to keep making big movies. If I write something big again, I may give it to someone else to do.'' He even asked Robert Rodriguez, who made ''From Dusk Till Dawn,'' to direct ''Dogma'' because he's not much of a visual stylist and hates shooting action. ''But Robert talked me off the ledge and said I should do it myself.''

Smith seems most proud that he's grown artistically as a director. ''I looked at `Chasing Amy' recently and I was amazed at how boringly flat it is, lining guys up against the wall and calling it cinema. I actually moved the camera around in `Dogma,' so maybe I'm not such a minimalist after all. And it looks good. Not as good as a lot of other directors' films, because I'll never be a visual stylist chiefly, I'll always be a writer first.''

His chief worry is running out of things to say. ''Then I'll be screwed because I can't direct someone else's script. I had the chance to direct `Good Will Hunting' but I turned it down because I'm just not good enough. So when I run out of ideas I'll be done with film, and what will I do then?''