I go to read the script of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt this week, and I actually liked the sermon in the first scene of Act 2...

A woman was gossiping with a friend about a man she hardly knew--I know none of you have ever done this--and that night she had a dream. A great hand appeared over her and pointed down at her. She was immediately seized with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The next day she was to confession. She got the old parish priest, Father O'Rouke, and she told him the whole thing. "Is gossiping a sin?" she asked the old man. "Was that the Hand of God Almighty pointing a finger at me? Should I be asking your absolution? Father, tell me, have I done something wrong?" (Irish brogue) "Yes!" Father O'Rouke answered her. "Yes, you ignorant badly brought up up female! You have borne fasle witness against your neighbor, you have played fast and loose with his reputation, and you should be heartily ashamed!" So the woman said she was sorry and asked forgiveness. "Not so fast!" says O'Rouke. "I want you to go home, take a pillow up on your roof, cut it open with a knife, and return here to me!" So she went home, took the pillow off her bed, a knife from the drawer, went up the fire escape to the roof, and stabbed the pillow. Then she went back to the old priest as instructed. "Did you gut the pillow with the knife?" he says. "Yes, Father." "And what was the result?" "Feathers," she said. "Feathers?" he repeated. "Feathers everywhere, Father!" "Now I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out on the wind!" "Well," she says. "It can't be done. I don't know where they went. The wind took them all over." "And that," said Father O'Rouke, "is GOSSIP!" In the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen.

Yeah, some people think that gossip seems pretty harmless.

But that's what they just think.