The Legion of Decency was established by the Catholic bishops for the purposes of guarding the morals of Catholics and other Americans and influencing Hollywood to produce morally acceptable movies. One of the Legion's methods was to solicit pastors to have parishioners pledge in church not to view any "vile and unwholesome" motion pictures. Initially quite influential, the Legion's potency waned after 1950 and its task of labeling movies according to their moral quality was integrated into the responsibilities of a department of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.