Has anyone watched John Patrick Shanleys film 'Doubt'? I watched it recently and was fascinated by it. Meryl Streep played the severe Sister Aloyisius, the principal of a Catholic School, and Philip Seymour Hoffman played the rather unconventional Priest, Father Flynn. Sister Aloyisius forces Flynn out of his position because she is convinced he has had an inappropriate relationship with a male pupil. Was she right to force him out without evidence? She told a lie in order to trap him. Was she right to do so? She said that "in the pursuit of wrongdoing one steps away from God". Is that so? Is that what Jesus did when he became sin for us?

Thanks Phog. Your reply is very interesting and gives me food for thought.

Hi Jacobsmaximus,

In so far as what Jesus said years ago you must put your trust into what the Christian Bible says. For instance the situation Jesus created by saying that he brought the sword into the world, it must mean something for what a sword does, it couldnt be that it relates to the weather. In relation to stepping away from God in pursuit of justice, Christian Bible tells you what happened to a women by the name of Jezebel who was killed on account of her unlike ways to the Order of the Hebrew religion. As far as I know there was evidence of Jezebel's wrong doing, this scenario you are presenting from a movie is not religious in origin. It is a sort of what if scenario. Perhaps you could say for this movie that in the event there is enough suspcion it makes for evidence and thus meeting out judgement.

You do raise an interesting point if this could be taken further on a larger scale in real life. Imagine a society where you have to live above suspicion, enough said that is a movie.

Cheers.

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Light of Night.

First of all, the movie is set in 1964 at a Catholic church in the Bronx, New York.
It was made for ordinary people to watch, not for studying the religion, so I could enjoy the movie too, though I am an agnostic.

Father Flynn(Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a nice guy, though he smokes/drinks like an ordinary people but he is not a kind of man who touches a little boy; at least I think so.

However, Sister Aloysius(the iron-gloved Principal who believes in the power of fear and discipline) assumed he did a sexual act on a black boy and she trys to catch him out tenaciously, (even one steps away from God in the pursuit of wrongdoing). But nobody(including me) takes sides with her, even Sister James(nice young Sister).

Movie Trailer:
Official Movie Trailer

Well put Epi, but go back to the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane - Jesus correctly says to God that 'nothing is impossible for you', so asked God to 'take this cup away from me'. I think Scripture teaches that it was Jesus' choice, even at that eleventh hour, to go to the Cross and become sin for God's people, or to walk away and leave it to God to choose another means of redeeming us (and of course God could have done so as nothing was impossible etc...). But Jesus added, reluctantly I believe, "Yet not my will, but yours be done". It was Jesus who elected to become sin, knowing that it would separate him from God the Father. Therefore it was Jesus who put the distance between himself and God and he did so in the pursuit of sin - to break its power over man.

I agree that Christian doctrine forbids the deliberate use of sin and that the nun was wrong to do so. But how does that make her sin any different to yours and mine? If we have any compassion we should give her the benefit of the doubt and accept that she believed in what she was doing - that the end justified the means. It would not have been the first time in the service of God that a lie had been told to protect the innocent. The vulnerable boy was protected, and the Rev Creepy made aware that someone was onto him.

PP, you are not a Believer, preferring to submit to your failures (you say) than to Christ so you cannot possibly understand the things of the Spirit. So I won't dignify your post with an answer.