Abstract: Prize-winning American drama Doubt: A Parable begins like a detective story. The heroine Aloysius suspects that Father Flynn of her church school is molesting underage black student Donald and conscientiously conducts an investigation. However, the mystery ends nowhere near a detective story. Such an unprecedented exploration of a sinning body urges the viewer to observe it in a different light and suggests that the burdensome body may be more enlightening than blindfolding, that sinning body seems to be able to cause noble charity, hence doubts about established definitions of “sin” and crime, and that since some “noble” charitable activities might originate in the sinfulness of the flesh, we might as well doubt the nobility of charity.

Key words: Doubt: A Parable, John Shanley, body, embodied philosophy