A few minutes into this movie I wanted to dislike it intensely. It seemed that we were being set up from the beginning to view the priest played by Hoffman as someone who was having inappropriate relationships with the boys in this 1960’s Bronx Catholic school. My reaction was based on the fact that we could see what was going on so clearly, yet the staff of the school seemed oblivious. It would have been too easy to make a movie that attacks the Catholic church, or uses a “ripped from the headlines” approach to engage the audience. However, not long into the movie it takes a turn, and the doubts and ambiguity of the situation start to be spelled out for the audience. This is a clever film, and one with significant lessons for how people try to do well in difficult circumstances, and what organizations need to do to address wrong-doing.[Warning: Plot spoilers follow]
Streep plays Sister Aloysius, an old-fashioned nun and stern principal of the school. She distrusts Father Flynn, a laugh-out-loud jolly priest with a compassionate view of what it takes to help children grow and provide love and support in a poor working class neighborhood. Sister Aloysius distrusts his use of ball point pens, (we can almost hear her mutter “tools of the devil”), and in turn Father Flynn says “the dragon is hungry” when seeing the principal call another luckless student to her office for discipline.
The drama in the movie revolves around the school’s first African-American student and his relationship with Father Flynn. Is the priest just solicitous and compassionate, or is there something inappropriate in their relationship? Sister James thinks she sees something when the pupil is called to a private meeting with the Father, and she suspects she smells alcohol on the boy’s breath after. The boy’s mother just wants to enable her son to graduate, go to a good high school, and avoid a beating from his father who suspects him of having an “unusual nature”. Sister Aloysius goes on a crusade to get Flynn to confess, Flynn provides extremely plausible explanations of everything that happens.
The film’s ending leaves what actually happened unresolved. We don’t know for sure whether there was any wrongdoing. Indeed, we don’t know if Sister Aloysius’ distress and doubt at the end is at the role played by the church hierarchy, or directed at her own role in removing a potentially innocent priest from his calling to teach, or even a wider doubt in her faith that such things could happen at all.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops gives the movie a favorable review, (http://www.usccb.org/movies/d/doubt.shtml), despite the fact that it deals with themes of child abuse and sexual misconduct within the Catholic Church. I think it is because the film deals sympathetically with the dilemma of the school, the staff and the Catholic Church, a dilemma faced equally often today by contemporary businesses and organizations.
Since at least 1970, social researchers such as Latane & Darley, (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=20070430084944AAby7D0), have recognized five stages of helping behavior.
1. You must notice an event
2. You must interpret the event as requiring help
3. You must assume personal responsibility
4. You must decide what action is required
5. You must act
The film illustrates that this is not as obvious as it seems. It would have been easy for Sisters Aloysius and James to ignore the warning signs of potential misconduct, and equally easy for them to accept Father Flynn’s explanations as showing no intervention or help was necessary. Similarly, had not Sister Aloysius taken personal responsibility for dealing with the situation and saving the boy the movie illustrates that the church and the schools in this era had no infrastructure set up to deal with child abuse. While Sister Aloysius works through her options it is clear there is no one easy way to deal with a potentially inappropriate relationship in the school and the church. Her actions end up including direct confrontation, (trying to get Father Flynn to confess), and deception, (pretending she has spoken to a nun from the Father’s previous school who has spilled the beans on his past). Sister Aloysius is a model of the Latane and Darley theory, but also a sad illustration that a reinforcing social infrastructure is needed to enable helping behavior to be successful.
What can contemporary organizations do to enable helping behavior to succeed?
Organizations can “inoculate” themselves against bad behavior by systematically and sequentially addressing Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Abilities and Reinforcement. Using the movie Doubt as an illustration, here’s how a successful implementation might look.
Awareness: What is right and what is wrong needs to carefully explained so everyone is aware of the difference. Meeting with the priest to discuss pastoral matters is right. Calling boys for private meetings with Father Flynn when the purpose is unspecified and setting is hidden is probably wrong. Providing respect and support is right, providing hugs and giving individual gifts, (as Father Flynn does), is probably wrong. One of the major traps Father Flynn and many organizations fall into is that it is not enough not to do wrong, you have to be seen to not do wrong. Even if Father Flynn’s behavior had been acceptable the private and secretive nature of the relationship provided enough of an opportunity that something inappropriate could be happen. As such, Flynn’s behavior was wrong and his actions should have been subject to “the cleansing light of open air”.
Desire: There needs to be a shared understanding and desire of what the right behavior will do, and how the future can be better. Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn have very different views of what is right for the boys in the school. The principal is a disciplinarian who favors mirrored glass to enhance the ability of the teachers to have “eyes in the back of their heads” and hands out repetitious tables and word drills for disciplinary infractions. The priest believes the boys respond to positive modeling, (“look at my clean nails” he says), and offers opportunities for sport and positive interaction as well as delivering his traditional sermons from the pulpit. An organization needs to create a vision of what can come from positive change, and engage everyone in working constructively toward the common goal. Such collaboration lessens the possibility of in-fighting and reduces the opportunity for bad or deviant behavior to exist or worsen.
Knowledge: Had Sisters James and Aloysius been able to understand from the beginning the purpose of what had been happening between the priest and the boy there would have been less room for ambiguity. The priest was secretive, exerting his authority in the face of legitimate enquiries and attempting to intimidate the principal with a sermon on intolerance. One of the surest guards against bad behavior is public knowledge. The less that is secretive in an organization, the less opportunity there is for bad behavior to go unnoticed.
Ability: Sister Aloysius doesn’t know what her abilities are to act against the appearance of wrongdoing from Father Flynn. Had the school or church wanted to ensure such things did not happen there needed to be system of enquiry or “whistle blowing” that empowered anyone with suspicions. The system need not be punitive. It should have given Sister Aloysius the ability to have her doubts heard without adverse consequences. It should have enabled self-learning in the school and church as organizations. The school could have let Father Flynn continue in place, but changed its rules on private meetings with the boys or the giving of personal favors. One of the saddest outcomes of the movie is that you suspect that if Father Flynn were guilty, the church had simply moved him to another parish where he could transgress again unless there were another equally powerful sister to stand up to him.
Reinforcement: This is the crux of the final scene in the film. Sister Aloysius is not positively rewarded for what she has done. Rather, she is left out of the church’s decision to relocate Father Flynn, and left to deal with her own doubts over her actions. She is comforted by Sister James, but not by the church and its hierarchy. We wonder as an audience whether it was worth it for her. There is a whole sub-plot in which the boy’s mother wants no part of confronting the priest, and it seems that she is alone and unrecognized. Would she do the same again? Father Flynn moves on, neither reprimanded nor enlightened as to his role. Indeed, we are told his new position is a promotion. Organizations need to set up positive reinforcement for people who do the right thing, especially when it involves speaking up against authority or disclosing unpleasant truths.
Doubt is a powerful movie with great illustrative power. I will be using it with my clients to demonstrate a practical example of how well meaning people can’t always prevent bad behavior, and how organizations need to reinforce and support people doing the right thing.
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