In spite of the title, this 1973 film is a humanistic movie.  It concerns a rarely acknowledged truth about religion:  in every person with Great Faith lies the seeds of a Great Doubt.  Without an outlet, that kind of doubt can be agonizing.

The movie is set in a fictional near future.  It begins with what appears to be a simple and arcane dispute over doctrine.  A group of monks on a remote Irish coast performs the Mass in Latin.  The Vatican sends a young priest (played by Martin Sheen) to convince them to use English, according to Church policy.  Their Masses are getting media attention and are being interpreted as the beginning of a conservative counter-revolution.

Surprisingly, and with little resistance, the abbot of these devout monks (Trevor Howard) agrees with the priest, and he orders the monks to be obedient.   But in private, he offers his resignation.  At first, he seems faced with a conflict between the orders of a bureaucracy versus his individual conscience.  

Then the abbot reveals a greater problem to the priest.  He has lost his faith in God.  The abbot said that he once travelled on a pilgrimage to Lourdes.  Rather than being inspired, he was deeply depressed at watching poor, sick people who spent all their money hoping for a miracle but not getting one.  After that, he couldn't pray without being depressed.  He told the priest, "Hell is a monk without God, who looks at the alter and sees pieces of wafer but no God there."  He remained an abbot because he liked being a manager to the monks, but he had no convictions and he had no one to confide in among the other monks.

The movie ends in an ambiguous way that leaves the viewer wondering how widespread this type of problem is.  The priest accepts the doubt of the abbot, who stays at the monastery, and they conspire to hide any disagreement from the monks.  How much a part of their lives is the doubt that they are trying to conceal?

The movie was made for TV and may be hard to find on video, but it certainly is a rare movie about the human cost of religious faith.