Gossip

I just saw the play "Doubt", and I've already since the movie version of it. The priest does a sermon on Gossip and makes up a story to get the message across. In not these exact words he tells of how a woman came to him and asked him if gossip is bad, and he said it was, and so she asked for forgiveness. He said this was not enough. He told her to go home, get a pillow, go onto the roof and dig a knife into it and then come back to him. She did this and returned to the priest. He asked her what happened and she said she took a pillow from her bed, went up the fire escape and slashed the pillow. He asked her what the result was. She said, feathers, lots of them. He told her to go back up to her roof and collect every single feather that has dispersed. And she said it is impossible, that they had spread everywhere. His response was: Exactly. That is gossip.