Filmmaker Kevin Smith's once-devout Catholic faith has "lapsed" in the 25 years since he made religious comedy Dogma, but his love for the film hasn't changed.

"The kid who wrote and directed Dogma believed in everything you see in that movie," Smith told UPI in a recent Zoom interview. "Like, that's not Christian mythology to him. That's what happened. That's the faith he was raised in, it was the stories he was told as a kid."

Smith, who plays Silent Bob in Dogma and the rest of the Askewniverse films, said he now looks back on the making of Dogma as "the beginning of the end" of his faith. He compared the waning days of his faith in Catholicism to a failing marriage.

"Dogma was me having a baby with the Catholic Church trying to save our marriage. And you know, it's a beautiful baby, I'm glad it exists. But it wasn't able to save the marriage," he said.

The filmmaker said the thing that finally "disabused" him of his faith and turned him into a "lapsed Catholic" wasn't Dogma -- it was his podcast.

"Oddly enough, it was doing Smodcast for 12 years opposite Scott Mosier, who's a very intelligent agnostic and wasn't trying to chip away at my faith, but [when] you have enough conversations about what happens afterwards with somebody who's not a member of the faith, it will have an effect."

"People like my mother. You know, she talks about Jesus unironically... but she's also, you know, not one of these people that uses Jesus to tell you who you can and can't love."

"When I think of religious people, truly spiritual people, I don't think about those people. Those people are just gatekeepers, Those people are elitists who are just using faith, spirituality -- using Christ as both a shield and a sword."

Smith said there are times when he wishes he still had his faith. He said "things started to crack" when he started coming to terms with being alone in the universe, and that led to his month-long stay in a mental hospital in January 2023.

"I went crazy three years ago, and I honestly don't think I would have went crazy if I still had my faith. Because when you have your faith, there are no problems. Are you kidding me? 'J.C., take the wheel.' Jesus is there for you."

He said revisiting Dogma for its 25th anniversary gave him a feeling of nostalgia toward the beliefs he used to hold.

One thing missing

Smith took Dogma, which releases its 25th anniversary Blu-ray on Tuesday, on tour during the summer, an experience he said initially worried him.

He said he worried the movie might come off as too dated, or could include jokes that were offensive in ways he hadn't considered at the time of the original release.

"I was happy to report that when I watched the movie for the first time, like with the audience at the LA screening, when we kicked off the tour on Easter Sunday, 4/20, there was nothing that made me cringe," he said.

The only real issue he had with the film, he said, was one glaring omission from a scene where Cardinal Glick, played by George Carlin, is confronted with the Catholic church's "mistakes" -- silent consent to the slave trade and its platform of non-involvement during the Holocaust.

"Every night I watched the movie, I sat there going, 'Something's missing from that egregious Catholic sin list,'" Smith recalled. "Something that wasn't really talked about or well known when we made that movie, but in the intervening years exploded in a nuclear way and brought the numbers of the church down."

That missing "sin" was the church's cover-up of widespread sexual abuse committed by priests.

"That's missing from that list, and it's only missing from the list by virtue of the fact that when the kid wrote it, when he was in his 20s, that wasn't very well known," he said.

The present and future of Dogma

Aside from that omission, Smith said he was pleased with how well the film has aged -- and unlike during its original release, he was actually able to enjoy the process of screening it.

"My experience with Dogma's theatrical run was fraught with, you know, peril and worry and concern. Is it going to make enough money? Will people like it?" he said, adding that his anxiety was compounded by "the sturm and drang from the religious right" that resulted in him getting death threats.

"Now in 2025? Like, I got to enjoy it because none of that [expletive] exists anymore," he said.

That changing cultural landscape, as well as the changes in his own outlook on religion, have inspired the writer-director to begin work on a follow-up to Dogma.

"The guy who wrote Dogma believed in everything that's in that movie," he said. "The guy who's writing the Dogma follow up? Not so much, but that's kind of the way in. Whereas the way in before was true faith, the way in this time is loss of faith," he said.

The 25th anniversary edition of Dogma is out Tuesday on Blu-ray and 4K UHD.