"What have you seen?"
~(Sister Aloysius/Principal)~
"It is unsettling to look at people with suspicion.
I feel less close to God."
~(Sister James/Teacher)~
"When you take a step to address wrongdoing,
you are taking a step away from God,
but in his service.
What have you seen?"
~(Sister Aloysius/Principal)~
Father Flynn's Sermon
A woman was gossiping with a friend about a man she hardly knew.
I know none of you have ever done this.
(congregation chuckling)
That night she had a dream.
A great hand appeared over her and pointed down at her. She was immediately seized with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The next day she went to confession. She got the old parish priest, Father O'Rourke. She told him the whole thing.
"Is gossiping a sin?" she asked the old man.
"Was that the hand of God Almighty pointing a finger at me?
Should I be asking your absolution Father?
Tell me, have I done something wrong?"
"Yes," Father O'Rourke answered her.
"Yes, you ignorant, badly brought up female.
You have borne false witness against your neighbor.
You have played fast and loose with his reputation, and you should be heartily ashamed!"
So the woman said she was sorry and asked for forgiveness.
"Not so fast," says O'Rourke.
"I want you to go home.
Take a pillow up on your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me."
So the woman went home, took a pillow off her bed, a knife from the drawer, went up the fire escape to her roof and stabbed the pillow. Then she went back to the old parish priest as instructed.
"Did you gut the pillow with a knife?" he says.
"Yes, Father."
"And what was the results?"
"Feathers," she said.
"Feathers," he repeated.
"Feathers everywhere, Father."
"Now, I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out on the wind."
"Well," she said, "it can't be done.
I don't know where they went. The wind took them all over."
"And that," said Father O'Rourke, " is GOSSIP!"
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Amen.
Doubt (2008 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Doubt is a 2008 American drama film adaptation of John Patrick Shanley's Pulitzer Prize winning fictive stage play Doubt: A Parable. Written and directed by Shanley and produced by Scott Rudin, the film stars Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, and Viola Davis.
The film's four main actors were heavily praised for their acting, and all of them were nominated for Oscars at the 81st Academy Awards. Viola Davis received her first nomination and Amy Adams received her second nomination for Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Philip Seymour Hoffman received his second nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and third overall, while Meryl Streep received her twelfth nomination for Best Actress and her fifteenth overall.
Set in 1964 at a Catholic church in the Bronx, New York, the film opens with the jovial Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) giving a sermon on the nature of doubt, noting that, like faith, it can be a unifying force. The next evening, Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep), the strict principal of the attached school, discusses the sermon with her fellow nuns, the Sisters of Charity of New York. She asks if anyone has observed unusual behavior that would inspire Father Flynn to preach about doubt, and instructs them to keep their eyes open should any such behavior occur in the future.
***
per·i·pa·tet·ic
[per-uh-puh-tet-ik]
adjective
1.
walking or traveling about; itinerant.
2.
( initial capital letter
) of or pertaining to Aristotle, who taught philosophy while walking in the Lyceum of ancient Athens.
3.
( initial capital letter
) of or pertaining to the Aristotelian school of philosophy.
noun
4.
a person who walks or travels about.
5.
( initial capital letter
) a member of the Aristotelian school.
***
Despite my sympathies being more in line with principal Sister Aloysius and the mother of the young negro student at the center of controversy rather than with Father Flynn,
oh how
the
"peripatetic wind"
struck a cord with me during Father Flynn's final farewell sermon before the congregation of this church.
the
"peripatetic wind"
struck a cord with me during Father Flynn's final farewell sermon before the congregation of this church.
I will move...
no more.
no more.
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