Todd's post yesterday provided an interesting backdrop for watching this trailer for the upcoming movie Doubt, based on the 2004 play of the same name:

At the first glimpse, it looks very much like what you'd expect from Hollywood treatments of the Catholic Church in the 1960s -- evil nuns, allegations of sexual abuse against priests, and general unhappiness for anyone who actually takes Church teaching seriously.

But all may not be as it seems. In 2005, Joan Frawley Desmond wrote in an article for Crisis magazine:

Faced with the lurid, tragic landscape of the Catholic Church's child sex-abuse scandal, some of the laity have posed the question: Where were the nuns when this was going on? Playwright John Patrick Shanley offers a rich, multi-layered response to this and many other related matters -- theological, psychological, and moral -- in Doubt, a Parable. . . .

Doubt's success rests on the playwright's ability to transcend the tired formula of the "issue play." It turns the audience's expectations upside-down, forcing a reassessment of a subject that has left most American Catholics spiritually exhausted and embittered.

Desmond goes on to describe the play as an "imaginative, balanced treatment" of doubt, faith, and the Church, "articulated in [the playwright's] perceptive approach to each character's vulnerabilities, makes Doubt a haunting, thoroughly engrossing theatrical experience."

Of course, that doesn't mean that the cinematic version will retain the thoughtfulness of the original -- Hollywood can't seem to help itself when it comes to botching adapted screenplays and getting in a swipe at the Church to boot -- but I'll stay hopeful for now. After all, Philip Seymour Hoffman is one of my favorite actors, so anything he touches must turn to gold...right?

Meanwhile, do read Desmond's review of the play (though be forewarned that she spoils the ending).