BY RICH BROWN

Years before upsetting Catholics with his controversial new movie, Dogma, director Kevin Smith was an altar boy with a devilish streak. Smith recalls in October's Interview how, as an altar boy, he would use the communion procession to take out his aggressions on people. "You see your friends, and then the people you don't like, you kind of slam them in the throat with the Communion plate."

Dogma doesn't open nationally until Nov. 12 but the movie is already upsetting some Catholics with its quirky plot involving two fallen angels (played by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) and a female God played by singer Alanis Morissette. Disney-owned Miramax, which originally planned to distribute the film, recently cut a deal with another distributor, Lions Gate, to handle the controversial title.

"If I was going to get up there and make a movie about faith or religion and it wasn't funny, it would be didactic and very soapboxy - and who wants to sit through that?," Smith asks rhetorically. "I just wanted to do something that was pro-faith and expressed my spirituality - my Catholicism. And in the process, I figured, you know, a few dick and fart jokes wouldn't hurt.

"At the end of the day, if you're going to object to anything, object to the fact that maybe I'm tasteless," he says. "But certainly not anti-Catholic or anti-Christian."