DOUBT's John Patrick Shanley Denounces Pope In Essay

Back to the Article

by Pat Cerasaro

DOUBT and MOONSTRUCK writer John Patrick Shanley has taken to the pages of the New York Times in an essay eviscerating the current pope, Benedict XVI, who, just yesterday, announced a sudden and almost unprecedented plan (600 years was the last time) to resign and step down from his position at the end of the month (during Lent, the holiest time of the year for Christians, no less).

Shanley begins, "POPE BENEDICT XVI quit. Good. He was utterly bereft of charm, tone-deaf and a protector of priests who abused children. He'd been a member of the Hitler Youth. In addition to this woeful résumé, he had no use for women."

He continues, stating, "I have watched the wealth of the Catholic Church turned into a subsidy for wrongdoing and a prop for the continuing campaign against women's rights and homosexuality."

He finishes by recounting, "I can only hope, for the sake of my parents, who loved the church so much, that a miracle of divine grace alters the writing on the wall. If not, the Catholic Church will suffer the fate it deserves."

Read the entire New York Times essay here.

Shanley's Pulitzer Prize-winning DOUBT originally starred Brian F. O'Byrne and Cherry Jones on Broadway and Shanley himself adaptated it into a well-received feature film in 2008 starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep.

DOUBT centers upon a wizened nun suspecting her parish's priest of molesting one of the boys who attends the church's attached parochial school.