"Evil," "Sin," or "Doubt"?: The Dramas of Clerical Child Abuse

The author discusses John Patrick Shanley's play "Doubt," through interwomen questions of genre and sexuality. Cullingford constrasts the play with Amy Berg's documentary film "Deliver Us from Evil" (2006) and Michael Murphy's verbatim drama "Sin (A Cardinal Deposed)" (2004), two texts that locate responsibility for the clerical sexual abuse scandal primarily in the hierarchy and structure of the Catholic Church and reject the stereotypical association between child abuse and homosexuality. Cullingford argues that "Doubt," the least factual of the three works, is also the most challenging: it permits the audience to imagine a positive relationship between a priest and a queer child. A fictional drama, with its absence of forensic evidence or victim testimony, freedom to embrace contradictions, and dynamically fluctuating engagement with different audiences, may be generically better suited than documentary to perform the ambiguities of this religious and sexual catastrophe.