symbolisim

Well there's cleaning dirty fingernails and cleaning under the foreskin - so we all know what Flynn meant when he said, "I like 'em a little long."

Flynn tells the boys that if the girls reject them they can become priests (i.e. pederasts).

I found the whole thing to be rather 'modern', i.e. unhistorical.

They had/have so many sins in the Catholic Church: I imagine that pederasty would be somewhere between masturbation and adult, male homosexuality.

When the nuns are having dinner, Sister James takes a piece of gristle out of her mouth and puts it back on her plate. Sister Aloysius glares at SJ, and SJ picks the gristle up and puts it back in her mouth, chews it down.

I thought this was really symbolic in light of what Sister Aloysius is accusing Father Flynn of: sexual molestation. So if you'll excuse me for being blunt, the gristle was symbolically Sister A's clitoris. Inversely, forcing Sister James to eat that nubbin of meat (ew) is comparable to what Sister A is accusing Father Flynn of doing: forcing Donald Miller to eat the meat.

I point this out as symbolic because you can tell that Sister A is generally overbearing with the nuns she's in charge of, unkind, withholding, which can be though of as abusive in and of itself. It provides a good backdrop for Father Flynn's plea to Sister James about there being "nothing wrong with kindness", which is the time-honored cry of your friendly neighbourhood pederast.

Yes lots of clever symbolism. The cat and mouse most obvious but clever, along with the tilted camera angles, looking at the street through barred windows in opening scene, the eye in the painted window looking at Fr. Flynn as he walks through a hallway, the dragon's breath (in the potting shed) coming out of Sister Aloysius' mouth when she's told about Donald and the wine, the window light striking Father Flynn's face like a slap when the blinds open and she asks "which boy!?", the red bloody meat on the priests' table, the long nails on Fr. Flynn (brought up many times), the meat gristle Sr. James was forced to swallow, the light bulbs blowing out above them twice. Maybe some just incidental things but they add flavor to emotions, like Sr. Aloysius kicking branches
in the yard, the sugar cubes and how unaware and entitled Fr. Flynn seemed when he asked for - not just one but 3 cubes, the ballpoint pens as too modern and demanding, the girl's berrette, the 2 liquor bottles on Sr. Aloysius' filing cabinet near the lamp - someone should perhaps confirm or agree or disagree, but certainly much symbolism in the settings. The sounds too, well done, the quiet of the nun's table versus the hedonism of the priest's table, the portentious thunder, lightening, wind and rain at night, all set effective moods. Did someone mention the zither at the beginning? For the trouble to include that scene it had to have some meaning.