Over the weekend I watched the movie Doubt and found it quite disturbing. Meryl Streep played a nun Sister Aloysius Beauvier, who was the principle of a Catholic Middle School in 1964, who was very cynical, thought everyone lied, rebelled against morals and rules or was just plain wrong due to her beliefs. She enjoyed her position because she loved to correct and discipline the children. But the main topic of the movie was about the priest and his relationship with the new and only black student.
We find that Sister Aloysius had already formed an opinion of the priest due to a gesture made between him and another male student. This small gesture was caught with a glance from a window. Another male student, who I feel was rebellious against the catholic school and wanted nothing to do with it or anyone associated with it, pulled away from the priest. Not even hearing the conversation, Sister Aloysius formed her opinion and was insistent and certain that the priest was guilty of an indecent proposal with the new student. No matter what the priest said he was wrong and lying. Her distaste grew for the priest when he recommended changing how the school was run to how many sugar cubes he liked in his tea. In fact they conferred over the annual school Christmas program to include the song Frosty the Snowman. Sister Aloysius Beauvier claims: “‘Frosty the Snowman’ espouses a pagan belief in magic and should be banned from the radio waves!” she says, quite seriously.
There is possible evidence for her interpretation. The song’s lyrics claim “there must have been some magic” in an old silk hat the children place on his head, which makes him come to life and “dance around.” In addition, once he comes to life, Frosty wants to “run and . . . have some fun” before he melts away — rank hedonism. Upon encountering a traffic cop and being told to stop, Frosty “only pauses a moment” and hurries on his way. A lawbreaker! And as he does so, he waves goodbye, “saying don’t you cry; I’ll be back again someday.”—reincarnation. Buddhist cycles? Pagan nature worship? Whatever it is, it certainly doesn’t appear to have anything to do with Christmas. Now here is a person if you want to win a conversation you must present her with all the facts in writing and still you might lose, because Frosty is a fictitious tale of fun for children and not intended to cause them to have unhealthy thoughts. Right? But that is beside the point.
What do we know about Sister Aloysius? She had been married, lost her husband from the war and becomes a nun. A hardened heart does a nun make? Having skepticism about everyone and everything, I find it odd that she doesn’t judge her own religious teachings seeing that she is suppose to believe in something that is built on faith alone.
In the movie there was a statement made that she had committed a grave sin, so maybe her redemption was to become a nun. How many of us have said or prayed “Please I will do this or that, if you don’t do that or do that?” She might have made that promise and stuck to it now only to be bored to death and creating drama to make her life seem meaningful. Throughout the movie her certainty and lie caused the priest to resign from the church. Oh yes, she lied to him to get a confession which he still denied her. But due to her strong conviction to this certainty, his resignation was only a confession of guilt. To this point her main objective was to be right no matter what the cost, because she had confided in others about his so called indiscretion and no one believed her.
He did not leave the church as an admission to guilt; he left the church to save the boy from ridicule, to save the church from embarrassment and to save his reputation. It’s not fun to be right when no one believes that you are. Right? And that’s without a doubt. …
For those who have not seen the movie, I do not want to spoil the ending….so enjoy.
