NEW YORK - "I tried to make a devout flick, you know?" Kevin Smith 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 upset Him."

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," William Donohue, the league's president, 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 rumoured $10-million to $12-million US) 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 Andrew Stengel, Miramax spokesman. "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 theatres nationwide.

"We loved it," said Mark Urman, co-president 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 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 humour -- 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?"