Sr. Aloysius, on the other hand, understands that things are the way they are for a reason. She may seem a bit obsessive about minor things, like the use of ball-point pens, but she knows that little things matter. To change them is no simple matter. She tells Sr. James, "Every choice today will have its consequence tomorrow. Mark my words." The changes that are beginning to come out of Vatican II may seem like good things to someone like Fr. Flynn, but Sr. Aloysius knows that there will be a price to pay. In one scene as she seems to be making small talk, she says of the weather, "The wind has changed." The wind (the Spirit) in the Church was changing as well, and Sr. Aloysius knows it.

At various points in the film someone shuts a window against the wind outside. In the big confrontation scene between Fr. Flynn and Sr. Aloysius, there is a storm raging outside (just as there is an emotional storm in Sr. Aloysius's office). At one point, as the wind is blowing and the rain pouring in, she slams the window closed and angrily asks, "Who keeps opening my window?" She does not at all approve of Pope John's idea of "opening windows" in the church. Indeed, when she gives Sr. James a picture of the Pope to hang in the classroom (to serve as a mirror to watch the students) it is a picture of not the current Pope, Paul VI, or even his predecessor John XXIII, but of Pius XII who has been dead for six years, and whose portraits usually look as stern as Sr. Aloysius.

The pros and cons of change are not limited to the Catholic Church. Change is taking place in many churches and in many ways. Protestant churches look no more like the churches of the sixties than Catholic churches today look like the church we see in Doubt. Many churches have been through "the worship wars" as they struggled with the kind of music to use: contemporary praise music with their new blessings for the church or the wonderful hymns that have blessed the church of many decades. They aren't referred to as "wars" for nothing. There were those who dearly wanted to hold on to the old because of the meaning the old held for them. And others enthusiastically wanted to bring a new spirit to the church. The winds blew and the storm raged.

It's been nearly two decades since Loren Mead wrote The Once and Future Church that made the point that society had moved into the postmodern period and the church would have to change with it. Then Bill Easum wrote in Leadership on the Other Side that the church is facing a trip through a wormhole—when it comes out, it will be different, but we have no idea yet what it will be. For some, these ideas may seem frightening. Others may see it as something to embrace and celebrate. The wind blows and the storm rages.

When Fr. Flynn gives his goodbye sermon to the congregation, he tells them, "There is a wind behind every one of us that controls our lives." We may never know where the wind will blow us. There will always be times that the direction the wind is blowing will lead us to doubt. It may seem to be blowing away the life we know. It may seem to be blowing us toward a wonderful new future. The wind blows and blows and blows

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