Doubt Trivia Quiz

Answer: Doubt

Father Flynn opens his sermon with a question: "What do you do when you're not sure?" This line also opens the 2004 John Patrick Shanley play ("Doubt: A Parable") on which this Miramax film is based, although it isn't quite the first line of the movie. (That honor goes to the mother of one of the altar boys, telling him to get out of bed.)

The priest goes on to discuss doubt, especially as it relates to faith in God. He assures the congregation that doubt can be as strong a bond as faith, an inclusive message which seems to comfort several of the parishioners. Rather less comforting is the presence of Sister Aloysius, who roams the church's aisles during the sermon and not-very-gently persuades the teenage worshippers to sit up straight and stop talking.

Answer: He wants to be a priest.

"I want to do that!" he confides in Father Flynn after the Mass. Impressed by the sermon and by the priest's connection with the parishioners, Donald wants to reach out, too. And he clearly idolizes Father Flynn, so why not follow in his footsteps?

The priest is supportive and even gives Donald a small gift -- a little figure of a dancer who twirls in front of a mirror, with the help of magnets. As the movie goes on, we see that Donald -- the only black child in the school, and one of only a very few non-white faces in the church itself -- is lonely and isolated from his peers, and he cherishes this small token.

Answer: Keep an eye out for any strange behavior at the school

The nuns' dinner is a quiet and solemn one (a stark contrast to dinner among the parish's men of the cloth, shown in a brief scene as loud and filled with laughter). Sister Aloysius asks the half-dozen assembled nuns what they think the morning's sermon was about, but when the very young Sister James ventures to reply, she is shut down.

The principal clearly doesn't like Father Flynn or his influence, and her request of the other nuns arises from her suspicions.

Answer: She fears that a fellow nun will be institutionalized if her worsening blindness is discovered.

Sister Veronica (Alice Drummond) is an elderly nun whose sight is failing. She needs help at meals and is even injured walking through the garden -- she can't see the fallen tree branch in her path. Fearful that Sister Veronica will be removed from the parish community and placed in a home for elderly nuns, Sister Aloysius lies smoothly to cover for her blindness. It's better, she thinks, to claim that the woman has failing balance or poor motor skills than to alert the monsignor to her real problems.

Of course, Sister Aloysius never allows any of this compassion or nuance to leak into her duties at the school. She is strict with students throughout the film, even forbidding ballpoint pens in favor of fountain pens. "Every easy choice today," she tells Sister James, "will have its consequence tomorrow. Mark my words."

Answer: Donald returns to class with the smell of alcohol on his breath.

Although we never see Donald's return to class -- we only witness his departure after Father Flynn's call -- Sister James's recollection of it is disturbing. She describes a boy returning to class distraught and uninterested in the lesson -- and with the distinct smell of alcohol on his breath. Later on, while her students are learning a dance in the school gym, she sees Father Flynn placing an undershirt in Donald's locker -- which hardly eases her doubts.

Sister James is a gentle young woman with a very innocent view of her faith and the world, and her suspicions are tearing her apart. After some reflection, she decides to go to Sister Aloysius with what she saw -- and is blindsided by the speed with which the older nun takes over. "Eight years ago, at St. Boniface, we had a priest who had to be stopped," she tells the younger nun. But I had Monsignor Scully then, whom I could rely on. Here there's no man I can go to, and men run everything. We are going to have to stop him ourselves."

Answer: Changes to the school's Christmas pageant

Father Flynn, who uses ballpoint pens and believes parishioners should think of the clergy as "family," is all for changes to the Christmas pageant -- and perhaps even the addition of a few secular songs. (This leads to an amusing aside wherein Sister Aloysius denounces "Frosty the Snowman" as heretical for encouraging a belief in magic.) However, the meeting quickly degenerates when the nuns reveal their true purpose for calling him in.

The priest has smooth explanations for everything they say, and attacks them for daring to think ill of him.

He even tells them that their accusations have given him an idea for a sermon -- and preaches fiercely against "gossip" a few days later.

Answer: He met with Donald because the caretaker had caught the boy stealing and drinking Communion wine.

Father Flynn appeals to the sisters, several times, to allow this to remain a private matter between him and the boy. "He's twelve years old!" Sister Aloysius sputters in response. "What could be private?" He then tells them that he met with Donald because the child had been caught pilfering the sacramental wine, and that -- feeling sorry for the boy -- the priest allowed him to remain an altar boy as long as no one else discovered the transgression. Now that the nuns know, Father Flynn says, that condition has been violated and he will have to remove Donald from his position as altar boy.

Sister James is thrilled by this response. "It explains everything!" she says: from the smell of alcohol to Donald's distraction in class. (It doesn't explain Father Flynn's placing an undershirt in Donald's locker, but she has not shared that detail with anyone.) Sister Aloysius, however, is completely unpersuaded.

Answer: She just can't believe that a man of God, like Father Flynn, would do such a thing.

This conversation is Viola Davis's only scene in the movie, and she makes the most of it. She plays Mrs. Miller as a mother desperately worried for the safety of her boy at home and at school, who considers abuse by a priest to be the least of a host of evils. Her son is gay, she tells Sister Aloysius, and "his nature" makes him a target for his father (who beats him) and for the other children at the school he used to attend. He may be lonely at the parish school, but at least he's physically safe, and if he can just last till graduation in June, then his Catholic education will give him a good shot at a high school where he'll be safe in the hallways. What Father Flynn is doing may not be right, but he's the only person who takes an interest in Donald and makes him feel valued, and she won't take that away from her child just because the priest's reasons aren't pure.

Sister Aloysius is shocked by Mrs. Miller's argument -- and by the mother's accusation that the nun may not truly have Donald's best interests at heart. The women's ideas of the boy's best interests could not be more different!

Answer: She says that she called his previous parish and spoke with a nun there.

Father Flynn is furious that Sister Aloysius has gone outside the chain of command. She isn't supposed to go to nuns of another parish for information; the monsignor of the parish is supposed to handle such things. "You have no right to act on your own," he rages. "... You have taken vows, obedience being one! You answer to us!"

Sister Aloysius is unmoved. She'll go to every parish he ever served in, she says (that's three in the previous five years), and talk to nuns and parents until she finds one who'll expose him. "You," she spits, "will go after one child after another, until you are stopped." She will risk her position as principal, her membership of her order, and even her communion with the Catholic Church in order to expel him from the parish. ("In the pursuit of wrongdoing," she said earlier in the movie, "one takes a step away from God, but in His service.")

Though he protests his innocence, Father Flynn sees that he cannot stand against this woman. He agrees to leave the parish.

Answer: He is assigned to another, more prestigious parish - which also has a school.

Sister Aloysius gives Sister James this news in the final scene of the film, sitting in the garden. With bitter humor, she says that she complained about the promotion to their own monsignor, who didn't believe her. She also reveals that she hadn't actually spoken to a nun at Father Flynn's old parish; it was a ruse, and when he lost his temper, she felt it confirmed her certainty about his guilt.

Sister James, whose faith and sense of the world has been assailed by events, tells the principal that she envies her certainty - and Sister Aloysius loses control. "Oh, Sister James," she cries, "I have doubts! I have such doubts!" We are left to wonder - does she doubt Father Flynn's guilt, after all this time? Does she doubt her own actions in response to her suspicions? Or is it in God that she doubts?

Thank you for playing this quiz, and for joining me in St. Nicholas Parish in 1964.