La Dolce Vita

To start, I think this film was very beautifully crafted. From the scenery (including flooded lower class apartments to aristocratic castle-like structures to the beach) to the costumes and hair styles, there were countless astounding elements to this film. From the first image I felt fully consumed in the film. I feel like there was no boring part. I know at the beginning the story line was a little slow, but it's hard to say it wasn't interesting.
I think that Fellini explores religious fervor with several of the events throughout the movie, including the opening scene with the helicopter. I think that the statue of Jesus flying over the city was ironic. The men in the helicopter hover for a while over the modern apartment building so they can wave at the bikinied sunbathing girls by the pool, all the while transporting a representation of the Son of God. As Catholicism is a very modest-conservative religion, it is easy to see that from the very beginning of the movie, it would be immediately rejected by the Catholic religion.
As the film continues I feel like Fellini pokes fun at religion, especially when the two children claim to see the Virgin. The children have such a hold on the crowd, that they make a game out of the attention the crowd gives them. They run in random directions giggling with each other, claiming each time that the Virgin appears to them, and each time the raucous, anxious crowd ranafter them. The eager crowd (which was full of the sick in hopes of finding a miracle) was determined to be healed and to feel closer to God. The tragedy of the situation is that one man actually ends up dying in the rain and excitement of that night.

I also think it's interesting that Fellini plays with the idea of ghosts and the afterlife. As some drunk party guests swarm into a building belonging to the party host, which he hadn't entered in at least two years, they are I search of communicating with souls that haven't "passed on."

So to answer the question: Is Fellini the ultimate Catholic or the ultimate decadent? I believe that based on his direction of this film he is the ultimate decadent.