Kelly is an instructor of creative writing and literature. In this essay, he examines the relationships that the characters in this play have with the world outside the Church.

Shanley's drama Doubt centers on a nun in a Catholic parish in the Bronx in 1964. She starts the play with suspicions that a priest in the affiliated church is a sexual predator, and she makes it her mission to have him removed, regardless of the cost to herself, his presumed victim, or anyone else. The play is carefully crafted to raise important issues—from faith to cynicism, compassion to discipline, and righteousness to obedience—but it recognizes the complexity of all these ideas and avoids taking sides. For all the attention Doubt has gained in the media because of its timely subject matter, Shanley's real interest is in the interplay between certainty and uncertainty and how too much...