A woman holds up a rosary during a protest at the New York premiere of “Dogma” last month.oct 4. Catholics have agitated against the film since spring. (MIKE SEGAR / Reuters)

NEW YORK - Kevin Smith is puddled on the hotel-room floor, chain-smoking Marlboro Lights and looking as if he doesn't know what hit him.

"I tried to make a devout flick, you know?" he says plaintively of his new film, which follows the acclaimed Clerks; the less-than-acclaimed Mallrats; and the bawdy, boy-meets-lesbian Chasing Amy. "I never thought it was controversial. I just thought it was . . . two hours of preachy Jesus [stuff]. Christ knew the value of telling a good story to get his points across. This film is not blasphemy. We treat God very devoutly. I believe in God. I don't want to [tick] Him off."

Whether or not Smith's latest movie, Dogma, has angered the Almighty is not for mere mortals to know.

But the R-rated film - a sprawling, overstuffed, frequently funny and often profane two hours that Smith calls a comic fantasia - has mightily angered some Catholics, who haven't been this worked up since Priest in 1995.

Dogma, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as a pair of ultraviolent fallen angels, Linda Fiorentino as a lapsed Catholic groping toward faith, and Alanis Morissette as God, is scheduled to open Friday. However, it has been the subject of controversy for months. The New York City-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights fired the opening salvos in the Dogma wars in the spring.

"Dogma represents the worst in Hollywood," league president William Donohue wrote in an April New York Times op-ed piece. The 350,000-member organization rallied its faithful to write letters to production company Miramax and its owner, Disney, urging them to dump a movie they saw as nothing less than blasphemous.

This wasn't the first time the league, which has no official connection to the Roman Catholic Church, had tangled with Disney. That history goes back to another Miramax release - the inflammatory Priest, in which the title character was gay. Donohue got the Knights of Columbus to sell their Disney stock, and called for a boycott of all things Disney, from theme parks to children's cartoons.

This time around, Disney didn't let things get that far.

Just before the movie's first screening at the Cannes Film Festival, Disney chairman Michael Eisner declared that the film would be "inappropriate" for the label, without giving details as to why, or talking about the protests as a factor in deciding to dump the film.

Miramax owners Bob and Harvey Weinstein came up with their own cash (a rumored $10 million to $12 million) to buy Dogma back from Disney to avoid controversy as well as the protests and pickets they knew a Disney distribution would ensure. "We wanted to avoid a fight," said Miramax spokesman Andrew Stengel. "Disney is too large a target and a magnet for groups who want to protest things."

Eventually, the film was sold to Lions Gate, a Canadian distribution company best known for highbrow art-house fare such as Gods and Monsters and The Red Violin. Lions Gate plans to release 1,000 prints of Dogma to theaters nationwide.

"We loved it," said Mark Urman, copresident of Lions Gate Releasing, who caught a post-midnight screening of the film at the Cannes Film Festival and was on the phone with Harvey Weinstein the next morning. "Dogma is a large film that commands and, in fact, certainly deserves a broad national release."

So what's all the fuss about?

You've got your armed angels leading a bloody massacre in front of a New Jersey church. You've got your cardinal, played by George Carlin, offering a grinning, thumbs-up Christ figure as a more palatable alternative to the dreary crucifix.

There's Chris Rock as a trash-talking black apostle who complains that racism kept him out of the Bible and that the Son of God still owes him money. There's Morissette as God, an inscrutable deity with a thing for skee-ball. And there's the heroine, Bethany (Fiorentino), a descendant of Mary and Joseph who struggles with her lapsing faith and works in an abortion clinic.

Supporters see the movie as a morality play couched in language, both verbal and visual, that young people will connect with. Take away the trappings, the dirty words, the blood and guts, and the calculated pushing of buttons (including a shot of a nun reading Hustler), and you're left with a movie that is ultimately about a journey of faith, the story of how embittered Bethany reconnects with God.

"It's not meant to offend," Urman says. "It is meant to entertain, to incite thought, to give an elbow in the ribs to people who might be complacent about certain questions, or who are cynical," he said, adding that the movie deals with the kind of Big Questions that typical comedic fare rarely touches.

Opponents, who haven't seen the movie but have read the script, say Dogma is something else entirely.

"A blatant ridiculing and attacking of the Catholic faith," is what Patrick Scully, communications director for the Catholic League, calls it. "Kevin [Smith] says it's pro-faith. Well, what about it is pro-faith? Is it the descendant of Christ who works with the abortion clinic? The George Carlin character who wants to change the crucifix to a thumbs-up Jesus? The gun-toting angels? What about it is pro-faith?"

Only everything, Smith says.

The film begins with a disclaimer, stating that passing judgment is for God, and God alone ("this means you, film critics!") and that even God has a sense of humor - witness the platypus. There follows a note of apology to any platypus fans in the audience, which sets the tone for what's to come - over-the-top irreverence, and lots of it.

"Harvey [Weinstein] asked for the disclaimer, and I said, 'Why? Isn't that saying there's something to disclaim?' " Smith said. "By the time they get to the rubber poop monster, shouldn't they know we're joking?"

His theory is that the Catholic League was gunning more for Disney than for him, or for the film's eventual distributors. Urman says Lions Gate hasn't heard a peep of protest since his company acquired Dogma.

But Scully says it's not about Disney.

"We have been doing press interviews about this particular movie, almost on an hourly basis. . . . We continue to speak out against it," he said. However, Scully acknowledged that the distributor, the theaters, and the people who go to see the film aren't the league's focus. The targets are still "the anti-Catholic content and the people who are responsible for it" - namely, Smith and Miramax, which "has a track record, going back to Priest."

As for Smith, he returns again and again to the point he's made from the beginning - he wanted to make a movie about belief, not to step on toes, not to hurt feelings.

"We weren't out to insult people. . . . I find it hard to be offended by something as dismissable as a movie or an art exhibit. Rape - rape is offensive to me. Murder is offensive. Stealing someone's dignity, taking someone's life - that's offensive. But a painting? A movie? Just don't look at it if it ain't your thing. There are far worthier things to be offended about."

And for the filmmaker, personally, there are bigger issues to dwell on. Three months ago, his wife, Jennifer, gave birth to their first child, a daughter, Harley Quinn, named for the Joker's girlfriend in the Batman comic books.

"I was shocked that the wife allowed it," Smith said. "It's been so fortuitous, in the midst of all this nonsense, when you're worried, and wondering whether you'll find a distributor, and you come across your child, and that [stuff] doesn't matter."