Doubt at Brigham Young University
His reading list was largely comprised of books I read in high school, plus films I'd already seen. Like many educators, he assigned films when he didn't feel like grading papers, almost always as a weekend assignment with follow-up, in-class discussion. One week he picked Doubt (2008), starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams. I had already seen it several times.
In case you haven't seen it, it's a film set in a Catholic community in 1960's Bronx. The story centers around a Catholic school, the nuns who run it, and a priest that may or may not be grooming and molesting a black male student who attends the school. Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) is the principal, and the crux of the film is basically set up to make you choose sides: either with Father Brendan Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as a victim of false suspicion, or Streep's character as the ignored and powerless voice of warning in a patriarchal church.
Because my family was Catholic in a predominantly Catholic city during the period covered by the film, that influenced my perspective watching the film. It seemed obvious to me that Streep was supposed to be the film's protagonist, and justified in her actions in investigating the priest. It never even occurred to me that anyone could be so unaware of the Catholic Church's history with sexual abuse, so blind to the patriarchy portrayed openly in the film, as to side with the priest.
But that's exactly what happened in our class discussion, to my shock and disbelief.
You can't fully appreciate how bizarre this scene is if you haven't seen the film. But imagine a room full of Mormon students at BYU, defending a Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing a child. I realize we're talking about fictional characters. But the history and gender bias those characters represent is very real. Listening to people I went to school with openly admit they would side with a man in a position of authority over a woman, regardless of the circumstances, was an eye-opening experience to me. They willingly dumped on a woman for attempting to protect a child from sexual abuse because it came at the expense of a man's reputation.
The professor was somewhat taken aback by the responses was getting. He asked for someone to argue the other side. I gladly volunteered. I still can't believe how coherent my answer was, considering I'd been living off of three hours of sleep a night for four months. All I did was point out what was plainly in the film. In my view, the film is only ambiguous if you don't believe any of the women in the films or trust their motivations, even when they are plain in their every action and showing no deception.
Have you ever said something that was making an entire room full of people deeply uncomfortable? And you can see it in their faces?
Yeah. That was me.
I'll never forget the question a male student asked me, pointedly, about how I could have this interpretation of the film in light of the final line. In that line, Sister Aloysius was talking to Sister James (Amy Adams) after everything is over, saying through tears, "I have such doubts."
It honestly never occurred to me that someone could interpret that line to mean Streep's character had doubts about what she had done. As in, remorse for what she had 'done to' the priest.
"She doesn't feel doubt about investigating the priest," I said. "She has doubts about how to continue in a church that would allow someone like that to even be a priest, and whether the God she believes in can actually save or redeem someone like that."
The whole room went silent. No one knew what to say.
In that awkward silence, I realized I had done something that several people in that room had been unprepared to experience. At a church-sponsored school, I had forced them to confront the false perceptions in their own minds of male church leadership as perfect men who would never hurt anyone and could do no wrong. They were realizing that the film was showing them how ready they were to be blind to abuse within their own religious community, to demonize those who tell the truth if the person doing so happens to be a woman.
They were not okay sitting with that truth about themselves. It honestly felt like I'd just told a class of Primary kids that Santa wasn't real. Except instead of something harmless like the reality of Santa, they were realizing not all men in positions of authority within the church are good, trustworthy people.
Moral of the story for LDS parents: don't forget to talk to your kids about abuse in church—that it exists, what it looks like, and how important it is to listen to and believe women. If you don't, someone else will have to explain it to them, perhaps after they've already reached adulthood. And it will not be an easy experience for them.
