Doubt and Faith: Religion’s Strange Bedfellows

I t’s 1964, the year after JFK was assassinated, and all is not well at a Catholic school in the Bronx. This is the opening of Doubt, the 2005 play by John Patrick Shanley, which earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play is back on Broadway until April in a dazzling new production starring Liev Schreiber, Amy Ryan, Zoe Kazan, and Quincy Tyler Bernstine.

Shanley wrote the play only two years after the Boston Globe exposed the Catholic Church’s child-sex-abuse scandal, when the evil inflicted on the vulnerable by men of the cloth had shocked the world and demoralized the faithful. Doubt is the fictional story of Sister Aloysius (Ryan), the formidable principal at St. Nicholas School, who suspects the charismatic and progressive-minded priest Father Brendan Flynn (Schreiber) of sexually abusing one of the students, Donald Muller, the only African-American child in the school. She confides in Sister James (Kazan), a good-hearted but naïve nun, who is mortified by Sister Aloysius’s suspicions yet nevertheless shares them.

In the Sixties, the Catholic Church lacked proper safeguards against instances of child abuse. And a nun who suspected that a priest might be engaged in it would have had little recourse without the support of a reliable superior — in the play, the “oblivious” and “otherworldly in the extreme” Monsignor Benedict. So, Sister Aloysius takes matters into her own hands, attempting to expose Father Flynn and drive him away from the school herself. Her evidence against him meets the threshold for suspicion, but it’s not substantive proof.

Did he do it? “You may come out of my play uncertain,” writes Shanley in his preface. “You may want to be sure. Look down on that feeling. We’ve got to learn to live with a full measure of uncertainty. There is no last word. That’s the silence under the chatter of our time.”

In the play, everything is subject to doubt — beginning with the facts. Sister James is doubtful that the “brilliant” Father Flynn could be so monstrous as to interfere with a child. But Sister Aloysius tells her, “You must try to imagine a very different kind of person than yourself.”

In one scene, Sister Aloysius informs Mrs. Muller (Bernstine) of her fears for her son Donald’s well-being. Much to Sister Aloysius’s horror (“What kind of mother are you?”), Mrs. Muller would rather turn a blind eye: Donald is close to graduating and has enough trouble as it is being accepted by his white classmates and by his father, who tries to beat his effeminate tendencies out of him. In other words, Mrs. Muller has her doubts that a potential sexual predator is the greatest threat her son faces. The threats of physical abuse from his father, social rejection from his peers, and disruption to his education seem to her more damaging.

To Shanley, “doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite.” The transformation of Sister James’s character, her loss of innocence, illustrates this point:

Sister James: I’ve been trying to become more cold in my thinking as you suggested. . . . I feel as if I’ve lost my way a little, Sister Aloysius. I had the most terrible dream last night. I want my peace of mind. I must tell you I have been longing for the return of my peace of mind.

Sister Aloysius: You may not have it. It is not your place to be complacent. That’s for the children. That’s what we give them.

Later, Sister Aloysius adds: “If I could, Sister James, I would certainly choose to live in innocence. But innocence can only be wisdom in a world without evil. Situations arise, and we are confronted with wrongdoing and the need to act.”

Amy Ryan gave a gripping performance as Sister Aloysius, made all the more impressive by the fact that she replaced Tyne Daly who had to drop out for medical reasons at a week’s notice. Schreiber was suitably charming as Father Flynn and Kazan’s girlish Sister James completed the dynamic. The production’s set and costume were vibrant. After seeing A Doll’s House on Broadway, which featured nothing but a few chairs and modern-day clothes, it was pleasing to see some thought go into this production.

I was fortunate in that the performance I saw featured a panel discussion after the play, including Schreiber, Ryan, and Kazan, as well as “special guests” from the Sisters of Charity. It was remarkable to see the actors demonstrate openness and warmth towards religious life and Catholicism generally. Clearly Shanley’s Catholic upbringing has made a lasting impression on him. Ryan read from the play’s dedication: “To the many orders of Catholic nuns who have devoted their lives to serving others in hospitals, schools, and retirement homes. Though they have been much maligned and ridiculed, who among us has been so generous?”

Doubt plays on the prejudices of the audience. To a liberal audience, Sister Aloysius has all the makings of a villain. She is suspicious of Frosty the Snowman. She disapproves of ballpoint pens. Father Flynn presents her as an intolerant reactionary, and, at times, she appears just that. Yet she is also undeniably perceptive. Before becoming a nun, we learn, she was married. Her husband was killed in the Second World War. Children, she believes, need “a fierce moral guardian.” She knows that life can be “longer than you think and the dictates of the soul more numerous.” As the play progresses and we see more of Father Flynn, more of his hidden faults and excesses come into focus. He is a talented orator, charming and “familiar.” But when crossed, he resorts to threats, undermining Sister Aloysius to Sister James when he catches her alone.

Ultimately, it’s up to Sister Aloysius to protect Donald Muller. “I have my certainty!” she tells Father Flynn during their final confrontation. But this is not altogether true, as we later see. Sister Aloysius tells Sister James that “in the pursuit of wrongdoing one steps away from God, but in His service.” Stepping away from God induces more doubts. But faith is the prize for those who persevere.