Last night I went to see a performance of John Patrick Shanley's stunning play, "Doubt". The usual theatrical marketing hype of words such as "powerful", gripping", or "riveting", insult the depth of this play and the complexity of the moral issues it arouses. It also begs the issue of the wide-spread spiritual malaise that has infected much of mainline Christianity in recent years. It is a malaise that goes far beyond issues of pedophilia or hierarchical complicity. It strikes at the heart of the interface between religion's historical tendency to exert power and control over trusting congregants in the name of "doing good", while in fact frequently being emotionally insensitive and abusive of those congregants' real needs and experience.

Set in the mid 1960's, just after Pope John the XXIII called the Second Vatican Council, at first glance this is a play about old school versus new school, and the sea change that took place in American Catholic society in that era. Demands for increased tolerance, sensitivity, racial awareness and a liturgical or pastoral style more attuned to modern society were the benchmarks of the day. So here we see a young priest, not content to spew platitudes to his parishioners, and drawing on his own life experience of wrestling with uncertainties to deliver hard-hitting, intelligent and thought-provoking sermons. As both pastor and basketball coach, Fr. Flynn is popular with the boys of the parish school, and befriends the sole and first black boy to enroll.

This simple act of kindness is turned into a deed of perversion and corruption by a nun of the old guard, the principal of the parish school, who is suspicious of Fr. Flynn's charisma, jealous of his popularity, and adamantly resistant to his change of style. Determined to oust this vibrant and human young priest from her midst and restore the school to her fear-driven control, this formidable woman embarks on a campaign of sabotage and destruction by innuendo, pretending moral certainty for her claims and the righteous superiority of her motives.

A hard-hearted woman, saddened and embittered by the death of her young husband in WW II, this autocratic matron not only targets the charismatic pastor of the parish, but one of the novice nuns who displays, in her opinion, entirely too much enthusiasm for teaching her students history. This robber of joy deliberately plants seeds of doubt in the novice, projecting her own worst fears onto her young charge. When the innocent nun reports that Fr. Flynn had invited the black boy into the Rectory, and the child returned appearing upset, we see the alarm go off in the elder sister's mind, as she launches into an impassioned, logically argued and utterly fanatical display of supposed concern for the well being of her students. Since this formidable woman is universally feared, there is no question of her showing warmth or real compassion to anyone. Instead, she delivers a diatribe from her platform as principal, revealing her deep-seated jealousy of the male power structure of the Church. Even while insisting on obeying its rules and regulations, she is striving heartily to work the system to circumvent all authority but her own.

Though clearly a victim of what in some Church circles is known as "chalice envy", the old nun is certainly not without grounds in her complaints against the hierarchy and their "old boy" complicity. She also is fiercely territorial about whatever power lies within her jurisdiction, and intends to wield it thoroughly, giving no quarter to those who offend her sense of righteousness.

Sadly, in this four character tour de force, we see the lives of each character (and the boy who never appears) deeply disturbed and reshaped by the venomous suspicions of this nun who has, no doubt, seen enough of real clergy abuse to feel totally justified and even oddly sanctified by her suspicions. The young and energetic Fr. Flynn appears compromised by the clear understanding that accusations are often far more powerful that facts. Despite a legal tradition that upholds the notion that one is innocent until proven guilty, the reality of both society and the inner workings of the Church is generally quite the opposite. Placed on the defensive to try to prove his innocence, Fr. Flynn only succeeds in fueling the old nun's Shakespearean certainties that "he doth protest too much".

The play could have gone no further than this hierarchical and gender-based power struggle fought in the name of holiness and righteousness. But where the playwright surprises us is in the addition to this clerical threesome of the mother of the lone black students who has, by this time, been thrown off the prestigious acolyte roster for allegedly indulging surreptitiously in the communion wine. The principal is convinced the child was given the wine deliberately by the sinisterly seductive Fr. Flynn, as a sure prelude to more grievous sins. Yet this appears not to be the case. To add another twist to the plot, this twelve year old boy is described by his mother as being "that way", implying a budding homosexual orientation that is anathema to his abusive father and provokes severe beatings. Instead of being horrified by the principal's insistence that she feels justifiably "concerned" about what she deems the "inappropriate relationship" between Fr. Flynn and this lonely young boy, the mother displays a mixture of denial and fierce protectiveness not only of her son, but of the one and only adult male in her son's life who has treated this boy with kindness.

The elderly nun appears to triumph. Fr. Flynn is transferred to another parish- promoted in fact by the Bishop- further devastating the vulnerable black boy. In the aftermath of her apparent victory, however, she confesses to the young novice that she had deliberately lied about finding dirt on Fr. Flynn from a former parish, though she had belligerently confronted the dumbstruck priest with her fabrication. She glibly justifies this chillingly egregious act by surmising that if there hadn't been any dirt from the previous parish, Fr. Flynn would not have resigned from this one. Whether she is disingenuous not to realize that her acid hostility was more than enough cause for him to resign, or she is actually convinced by her own toxic self-righteousness, is for the audience to decide. But finally, the play closes with this paragon of the old school confessing for the first time, and with heart-felt tears in her eyes and the first crack of human emotion in her voice, that she has "doubts", "terrible doubts". We are left to ponder whether this is a sign of emergent compassion, a long overdue surge of compunction for her sanctimonious malice, or a real crisis of faith causing her to doubt God and her own unshakable certainties, and possibly allow her to finally embrace her own and other's humanity.

Obviously, the themes in this play go far beyond the inner workings of the Catholic Church. They speak to the human dynamic that makes us so susceptible to slander and innuendo, so prone to losing our moral compass in the cross-currents of the mind's doubts, so insidiously malleable as to be lead to believe the worst on hearsay, speculation and suggestion, and so eager to think ill of those who pose any threat to the comfort of our individual world views- whether consciously or unconsciously. What is crucial for us to plumb is the unreliability of our feelings of certainty, without succumbing to its corollary, despair.

In a brilliant discourse years ago, the great Indian thinker, J. Krishnamurti, went so far as to claim that "Thought breeds fear". He went on to demonstrate methodically and precisely how the unquiet mind readily plays the "What if" game, and eagerly fills in the blanks with the worst possible scenarios, without a shred of factual evidence upon which to base such conclusions. Examining Shanley's script is an object lesson not only in the dynamic of how such things transpire, but the devastating effects they can have on people's lives.

It is bitterly ironic that those whom a religious community most expects to provide guidance in such matters, have such troubled minds, such agitated spirits themselves, that they fall prey to the malady they are supposedly called upon to heal. Too often clergy fail to model the behavior that would actually lead to the wholeness and holiness they proclaim. Yet it is not beyond imagining that faith can, in fact, be detoxified, and rendered the uplifting source of transformation our collective theologies would have it be.

To achieve this, clergy and laity alike are in need of developing the skills of quieting the over-active mind, so that it can function with greater clarity and reliability. This is essentially a non-linear function, integral to contemplative practices of both East and West, that allows us to witness our thoughts without being swept up by them. Far from the mind-numbing effects of disassociation or the avoidance and denial borne of depression, this is the acquisition of what the Sanksrit literature calls viveka and vairagya- discernment and dispassion. Paradoxically, the effect of this is an increase in compassion and an emotional balance that is, in itself, an antidote to the hysteria and paranoia that infects so many religious institutions that operate as closed systems, crippling those whom they aspire to serve.

Robert H. Stucky is the Executive Director of Faith In Diversity Institute.

Copyright © 2006 by Faith In Diversity Institute