One of the things reviewers have commented on is Daredevil’s unexpected grittiness. The violence is real, and the consequences of that violence are also real. When Matt Murdock snaps a man’s arm, the femur (ulna?) bone breaks through the skin. When Karen Page is choked with a sheet, the welt shows on her neck for several episodes afterwards. People make their choices, and then they face the consequences. This realism quickly made Daredevil one of my favorite elements of the MCU.
The other thing that I love is how the show’s brutal world is informed by the particularly Catholic morality of its hero. There have been a few conversations online about whether this show gives us an accurate portrayal of Matt’s religion, and I would argue not only that it does, but that by taking his religious beliefs seriously, and weaving Catholicism into the fabric of the show, Netflix has given us the deepest, most emotionally resonant version of Daredevil we’ve ever had.
Warning: this post comes with SPOILERS for the ENTIRE SEASON.
Tony Isabella made Murdock’s Catholic faith explicit, Frank Miller brought it to the forefront when he, ah, resurrected the character in the 1980s, and Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev referenced it in their run in the early 2000s. But I’d say it generally remained more of an affect than a central part of Matt’s character. Matt’s long-lost mom is a nun! Bendis sets a five-issue arc in a church basement support group! It’s window dressing that’s been adding an interesting check box to the character, not informing his actions.
The 2003 Ben Affleck film, like some of the comics, made half-hearted attempts to ground Matt’s dual nature in his religious beliefs—some of its battles are set in a church!—but none of these really deal with the fact that Matt’s moral beliefs fuel his life as a hero, and how his particular belief system would set him apart from other heroes. I should probably mention here that I unabashedly love this film, because it has my favorite moment of dialogue in any superhero movie ever:
Daredevil: Hey, that light? At the end of the tunnel? Guess what? That’s not heaven… That’s the C train!
It’s such a great specific West Side reference, it’s so horrifyingly cheesy, Affleck delivers it with such conviction, and, best of all, it’s extra hilarious cause when I moved to New York the C train NEVER CAME. You could stand on the platform threatening a rapist for hours, and you’d never get to kill them.
The Netflix series has chosen to make religion a foundational aspect of Matt’s character, expressing his struggles with his faith through his actions, and weaving that inner turmoil with outer drama to build him into a hero. Because the show is infused with Catholicism—and actually enacts a certain type of theology, as opposed to simply utilizing imagery and shallow references—it’s able to create an interplay between the fictional world of the show and the real world of Catholic faith in a way that I haven’t seen on television…well, ever?
Catholicism is unique among Christian denominations in that one can be culturally Catholic without believing in the dogma. One can still define oneself by or against the religion, years after they last went to church. (I’ve never seen a “Recovering Methodist” t-shirt.) It’s also very easy to slap the label “Irish Catholic” on something, and rely on people’s familiarity with cultural stereotypes to fill in the rest of the character. At first, I thought that’s what Marvel’s Daredevil was doing. The modern portion of the show starts in the most stereotypically Catholic place, the old school confessional–despite the fact that it’s common now for confession to be a conversation between the priest and parishioner, conducted face-to-face, not through the much-fetishized screen. The scene gives us the easiest trope, a priest who’s willing to sit through five minutes of exposition and backstory instead of telling their parishioner to get to the point and actually confess something. This is consistent with the “priest as sounding board” cliché that shows up in many superhero movies (including the 2003 Ben Affleck debacle) which I’ll talk about more below. So I assumed that we were just in for the usual shallow treatment of religion, but then the show slowly started incorporating more and more Catholic imagery.
First, the weight of violence is on all of the characters, all the time. In the comics, Matt makes occasional reference to explaining himself to St. Peter. In Netflix’s version, he says simply that his soul will be damned if he kills Wilson Fisk. Then he leaves with the intention of doing it anyway, staking his own salvation against saving New York. Karen is the one “good” character who actually murders someone, and rather than waving it off as a necessary act of self-defense, Karen scrubs herself raw in the shower, suffers from nightmares and insomnia seemingly for weeks, and even after Fisk has been put away, harbors such guilt over her actions that Matt senses it. The man she killed was himself a murderer. He told her that he would torture and kill everyone she loved, and she killed him to save her own life. But none of that really matters, Commandment-wise.
The show is not shy about mortification of the flesh. Matt Murdock is a normal guy, other than his super senses and his training. He doesn’t have Wolverine’s healing ability. He can’t deflect bullets or turn his skin to metal or flame. He has to keep getting hit, keep getting wounded. Over the course of the show, we see this process–old wounds reopen, cuts heal slowly, bruises linger, and each fight seems more labored. By the last few episodes, Matt is openly limping and wheezing his way into fights. The point is that he keeps going anyway.
The show makes a point of focusing in on one particular wound, a knife wound to his right side that opens up a couple times over the series. While it’s a fairly obvious reference to the similar wound suffered by Jesus Christ during the crucifixion, it’s significant I would say because it isn’t just lazy stigmata imagery—Jesus’ side was pierced by a spear as a proof of death before he was entombed. Each time Matt’s wound begins seeping blood, he’s that much closer to his own death. The more I thought about this, the more I believe I’m right in thinking that we’re never meant to see Matt purely as eye candy. Even in the early scenes of the show, when he sits up shirtless in bed he’s already bruised from a fight on the docks. Even though the Matt Murdock of the comics is, well, kind of a slut, and even though the show stresses Matt’s charm and attractiveness, there is never a moment that we can just look at him as a sexual object. He is always in pain.
Another thing I thought was significant, which might just be me reaching, is in the shift in Daredevil’s crimefighting career. If I remember correctly, Matt’s first action in the comics after all the training with Stick, is to hunt down the men who killed his father. However, in Netflix’s version, the first time Matthew Murdock ever puts on his mask and uses violence as a means to a morally correct end is to stop a pedophile who’s abusing his daughter. He puts the guy in the hospital—only after Child Protective Services fails to help the girl—and decides to keep fighting crime at night after he realizes that intervening has lifted a moral weight from his shoulders. Now this could be just a simple way to make Matt a good guy. Putting a child in a danger that only Matt knows about, and then showing us that the only way to save her is to circumvent the law, immediately puts the audience on his side. But…the same thing could have been accomplished through a bullying arc, or an attempted rape plot, or any other number of crimes with innocent victims. The fact that he strikes back against a pedophile (and later a human trafficking ring), when considered alongside the care he receives in a Catholic orphanage, seems to be a push back against the child abuse controversies that plagued the Church a few years ago.
After a great balance of flashback and present action, some fun worldbuilding, and a couple of instant-classic action sequences, the whole show grinds to a halt in episode 9, “Speak of the Devil”. (I mean this in a good way.) Matt returns to church, and finally takes Father Lantom up on a latte date. What follows is a fairly extraordinary moment, which I think is only possible now, in the era of narrowcasting, streaming TV, and cable drama. Without the fear of offending a sponsor, or alienating any particular religious affiliation, Matt and the priest speak seriously about faith. There is no snark, no irony, no embarrassed backing away from the idea of belief in the modern world of 2015.
Matt: Do you believe in the Devil, Father?
Father Lantom: You mean… as a concept?
Matt: No. Do you believe he exists? In this world, among us.
Father Lantom: You want the short answer or the long one?
Matt: Just the truth.
Father Lantom gradually tells him his story. As a seminarian, the priest was a well-trained, intellectual religious academic, who believed that “the devil was inconsequential, a minor figure in the grand scheme.” Since “Satan” only means “adversary” in Hebrew, he believed it was a scare tactic used to “drive people into the church.” We’re not dealing with some pious Bing Crosby figure here. But after witnessing utter horror in Rwanda, he came to believe that the devil was real, and that “he walks among us, taking many forms.”
In some corners of the internet, the idea of two grown adults sitting and having a conversation about faith would be laughable. In others, being open to discussing the thornier issues of the nature of evil and a person’s moral obligations would be considered too dark. But here we are, sitting at this table with them, and no one’s laughing.
Matt revisits the church twice over the next two episodes, actually coming inside this time rather than opting for a basement espresso. He comes right up to the edge of telling the priest his plan to murder Fisk, and says that he knows he’ll be damned if he goes through with it. Later on, as Matt and Karen try to deal with Elena’s death, they have a mirror conversation. While Karen isn’t religious, she does believe that Fisk will pay, cosmically speaking, for what he’s done, even if the law can’t touch him. What’s interesting is that Matt, the man of faith, can’t accept that as enough.
This ends up being the true turning point of the show–the final four episodes are all fallout from Matt’s decision to go against his morality and try to kill Fisk. After he’s nearly killed by Nobu, Claire comes and patches him up again, and tells him that the only thing she remembers from Sunday School is that “martyrs, saints, and saviors all end up bloody and alone” and leaves. Foggy feels so betrayed by Matt’s lies that he quits the law firm for a while, and they’re both too preoccupied with their own drama to help Karen, who ends up facing Wesley alone and inadvertently causing Ben’s death.
In the original Daredevil movie, Matt uses a priest as a sounding board rather than a source of actual moral guidance. In X2, Nightcrawler’s faith is personal, and he seems to self-conscious about his status as a mutant to seek out guidance from a priest of nun. In Man of Steel, Clark stops in to a local church for shelter, and asks some rhetorical-sounding questions of a (Protestant?) minister we’ve never seen before. The man gives vague answers, and mostly affirms things that Pa Kent already said—again, he basically just acts as a sounding board. In the leaked trailer for Batman v Superman v Justice v Your Ability To See What’s Goddamn Happening Because Zack Snyder Hates All Light, the stakes are upped–with a cacophony of voices asking what Superman’s existence means about humanity’s place in the universe–but the final authority who appears is Batman.
The priest in Netflix’s Daredevil is a fully-realized character. He was an academic in seminary, the type of nerd who studies the etymology of the Hebrew word for “Adversary” and then gleefully tells his fellow students why his studies prove Satan doesn’t exist. He’s comfortable admitting that the medieval Church used scare tactics against its flock. And then we learn that he worked in Rwanda, not as some sheltered missionary stereotype but seemingly to help people during the genocides. Now, 20 years later, he’s working in a church in Hell’s Kitchen, which, in the show’s reality, is still a pretty rough neighborhood. This is not the stereotype of a moralistic prude, or a religious zealot, or someone who would abuse a kid, or scare people with vision of hell. He genuinely wants to help people.
The role he plays becomes even more important during his fourth conversation with Matt. They talk about the Devil again. Matt is exhausted from his fight with Nobu and Fisk, and at a loss about how he should go forward. Now that he knows he was willing, but unable, to murder, can he still be a hero? How can he defeat Fisk without losing his soul? He asks Lantom if he still believes that God made everyone with a purpose, then “why did he put the devil in me? Clawing to get out?” Lantom muses that maybe it was God who invented the devil as a warning “to tread the path of the righteous.” Matt thinks this over, and while we don’t quite get the Sherlock epiphany moment, it soon becomes clear that we’ve had an origin moment within the origin story. Matt is deciding that he needs to become a symbol, and since there isn’t much of a bat population in Hell’s Kitchen, he decides to go with the Devil.
So this version of the hero is literally born in a church, during a heart-to-heart conversation with a priest. It’s also worth noting that only after this does he refer to Father Lantom as “my priest” when he tells Foggy about him. So over the course of the 13 episodes we’ve gone from him saying that his grandmother was the Catholic in the family to considering himself a member of Father Lantom’s flock.
And, as though to prove that Fisk and Murdock are mirrors of each other, Wilson’s own language becomes overtly religious. After Vanessa is poisoned, he sits by her bedside, and tells her that while he once attempted an imitation of faith, he does not know how to pray, “so I can’t pray for you. All I can do is make a promise, one that not even god can prevent me from keeping—the people that did this to you, they will suffer.” He later compares Ben’s faith in human nature to Christ’s and finally becomes the Kingpin not through a grand statement of power, or a bloodbath, or a crime spree, but through a retelling of the story of the Good Samaritan:
I always thought I was the Samaritan in that story. I’m not. I’m not the priest, or the Levite, or the Samaritan. I am the ill intent that set upon the traveler when he was a on a road that he should not have been on.
It’s a little on the nose, but it’s also thrilling: here we have a villain who is consciously choosing to be an agent of evil. Much like Nolan’s Joker, who considers himself an embodiment of chaos, Fisk has just elevated himself from a mere underworld boss to a true adversary.
See, this is the question I’m always asking myself: how would the sudden appearance of superheroes change society? When Mjolnir, a weapon out of ancient mythology, suddenly pops up in the desert, what does that do to people assumptions about other mythologies they’ve learned, and the beliefs that guide them now? Cap, Iron Man, and the Hulk can all be explained with SCIENCE, but Norse gods? Aliens crushing New York? If they’re out there, what else might be out there?
If we limit ourselves to the MCU, the Iron Man trilogy brushes up against this, with Tony saying that he thinks he lived “for a reason.” The first Avengers movie has a couple scenes of Natasha describing Loki as a god, and talking about an idea of moral balance. But we don’t really get to see the man on the street aspect–the droves of people turning to their religions for help, or turning away from them in horror, now that everything they thought about the universe has been proven wrong. The people who realize that the stakes of good and evil might be higher than they thought, and might try to become heroes or villains on a grander scale than ever before. Daredevil is the first MCU work that’s tackled it, and they did it by taking Matt Murdock’s Catholic worldview and running with it.
Leah Schnelbach wants to see the episode where Father Lantom spends hours creating latte art crosses in his parishioners’ cappuccinos. Follow her on Twitter!
He must be really strong for a femur to show through the skin after breaking an arm…
I’ve only made it through “Stick”, so I only skimmed. I’ll revisit once I’ve finished the season.
But I do think it is very interesting that Matt avoids killing due to his religious beliefs. That was certainly not true of Affleck’s Daredevil, and if you think about it, none of the heroes presented so far in the MCU are terribly worried if the bad guys live or die.
Cap machine gunned Nazis (Nazis = robots in that they are great for heros to unleash on) and knocked mercenaries off the Helicarrier. Tony killed terrorists. Pepper actually killed Stane and Killian. Thor and his buddies mowed down Frost Giants.
The only exception I can think of is Betty stopping the Hulk from killing the Abomination, and that’s really Betty’s moral code at work.
Contrast that with the majority of DC heroes who typically have a “Nobody dies” policy. Wonder Woman is the only major DC hero who kills when she deems it necessary and that puts her in opposition to everyone else.
That’s one of the reasons that Nolan’s Batman films rubbed me the wrong way. No one dies on Batman’s watch, ever, and if you change that you fundamentally change the character. If you make a Batman movie where one of the major villains is taken out with a gun then you don’t understand Batman, and you’re undermining everything he stands for. (If you make a Batman movie where Batman happily retires in his 30s to a life of ease and pleasure you also don’t understand Batman).
Uh, what were we talking about again? Oh, yes, I do appreciate the fact that Matt does not kill due to his religious beliefs.
Hi. This is a really interesting review. If it were my show, I’d have him talk to a couple of Catholic cops and/or a couple of Catholics serving in the military for contrast. There’s a ton of Catholic teaching on the use of violence, and vigilantism (generally Not Okay) is a great way to wrestle when ends justify means (or not), relationship to authority, accountability, etc. Sounds like the writers are doing a good job using this to give the character depth.
I’m glad to see a much better handling of the topic here than in the “Ladyhawke” article. I’m certainly intrigued by the show now.
@2/ScavengerMonk: Yeah, the casualness about killing in the MCU movies is my least favorite aspect of them. I find it ironic that this supposedly “darker” take on the MCU is the only one where the hero refuses to kill. (Although I do give the Avengers movies credit for having the heroes focus on protecting innocent lives. That was a key element of the Battle of New York scenes in the first movie, and I’ve read that it’s even more heavily featured in Age of Ultron. But they’re still killing bad guys all over the place in all their movies.)
Father Lantom’s discussion about the history of the concept of Satan was fascinating to me, and I’m wondering if it was actually true — that it really just meant “adversary” in general, and it was medieval theologians who first invented the concept of the Devil as a specific individual. Of course there was Lucifer in the Bible, but he was just a fallen angel, and I think that conflating him with Satan/the Devil came later. But I know better than to confuse a work of fiction with a work of scholarship, so I’m interested to know if anyone can verify or refute what Lantom said here.
And yes, it’s a scene that could never have happened on commercial TV or in a big-budget movie — not only because of their fear of controversial subject matters, but because of their rushed pacing, leaving little room for in-depth philosophical and conceptual discussions like this. This is novelistic television, and I like it.
In fact, I think I’ve been spoiled by Daredevil‘s more measured pacing — I’m suddenly noticing more how abrupt the scene endings and transitions are in commercial-TV shows, and wishing they didn’t have to shave everything so tightly. I’m also getting annoyed by all the quick cuts in the fight scenes, with practically every single move being interrupted by a change of camera angle midway through so you can’t really appreciate the stunt work. Hopefully more shows will follow Daredevil‘s lead in the years ahead.
This actually sounds not-as-horrible-as-I-feared, haha. I am understandably a bit twitchy when pop culture attempts to ‘tackle’ religion and Catholicism specifically (given the prominence you mention of throwing in some prominent Catholic iconography, profound sounding Latin chant, a few atmospheric stained glass windows and then going with a few stereotypes and then unintentionally mixing in some new age-y or protestant theology/spirituality and calling it good. Somewhat related to this is the ‘All Christians are Catholic’ trope on TVTropes). I love, love Nightcrawler, but I remember cringing at a few of the ways he described faith, which struck me as a bit more on the side of fideism. Also, the angel symbols were a bit new agey (possibly inspired by Enochian symbols) and not part of traditional Catholic angelology but…digression! He’s still my favorite :)
I could probably pick a few nits with their theology if I watched the show (esp. the conceptions of the devil being ‘i people’ and who is responsible for that), but at least it sounds like they are making a legitamate attempt to grapple with what it would mean to be a Catholic superhero (although I do feel I should point out that Catholic moral theology does allow for violence and even killing in self defense or the defense of others, but of course it is not the kind of thing that should be taken lightly at all, the act itself is still an objectively evil one, and of course motives should be heavily examined. As much as I love the movie, the Boondock Saints are probably not in the clear ;) But – it SHOULD be a struggle, so it’s cool that they are making it so).
I laughed a bit at your description of the priest because that pretty much describes most of the priests I know – not the specific circumstances/background, but the general description. Tto be fair, I tend to hang around university parishes which lends itself much more to thriving intellecutal discusisions about such things and a lot more active involvement on the part of the priest with the congregation (and beer ;) The most unbeleivable part about that segment was the latte, haha. But I’m in Wisconsin, after all…) than your typical diocesan priest. Although I guess in Media!Catholicism he is an outlier ;)
All that said, the show is not really about (or attempting to be) Catholicism itself, but how a specific character relates to it and how it influences them. So that also leaves a lot more wiggle room since we’re all just finding our way. It’s still nice to see that they are trying to take a nuanced approach to this. This does make me curious about the show, though, so you did your job!
@@.-@ – I am reasonably sure that is true (regarding the etymology) and I HAVE heard that theory before regarding Satan/the devil/Lucifer. That’s not what the Church teaches, obviously – there is a belief in a personified evil that can be traced back to that original fall. But that said, the idea we have of a pitchfork wielding devil who is the guy ‘in charge’ of Hell, as far as I know, is not really how it all works (nor is a dualist portrayal of two equal but opposing powers). That said, I do not purport to be an authority on the exact metaphysical nature of all this, or how directly this force is able to impact the world.
@1 Maybe he meant it to be taken “humerus”ly
Great article! And I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment. I thought religion was handled really well in the series. I loved every scene with his priest, they were among my favorites.
I also enjoyed you pointing out the bit about the KingPin as well. I just really can’t say enough about how well done this show is, showing the juxtaposition of DD’s rise against the KingPin’s as they weave the themes of religion, good vs evil, anger vs rage, and capital-T-Truth all throughout.
Pretty good article overall, but the author is mistaken on a few points and has glossed over some others.
First, there is no blanket prohibition on killing in the Catholic Church, which fully recognizes the right of killing in self defense and in defense of property, as well as the legitimacy of killing to defend others and their property, and for the sake of justice. The Commandment is “You shall not Murder”, not, “You shall not kill.”
Second, the Church very clearly and without hesitation teaches that torture is a grave sin, always and everywhere, and is never justifiable. Matt never seems particularly bothered by this.
I have not seen the episode where Karen kills someone. Does she actually murder someone, or does she kill in self defense? I’m betting it’s the latter…especially considering that the author says she killed him to save her own life.
Great article, it’s refreshing to read this after constantly seeing in this world nothing but criticism of religion, speaking as a Catholic who’s parents have worked for the Catholic Church I have had the blessing of knowing so many good priest and nuns, none of wich have had enything to do with eny recent scandals in the church. Thier just people trying to help others threw faith and believe me when I say they never get the credit they deserve.
@9/Mike DiBaggio: Spoiler alert:
It’s kind of iffy whether it strictly counted as self-defense. It was just her and her captor in an empty warehouse, and once she took the gun from him, she could theoretically have run away. Under New York State law, a person “may not use deadly physical force if he or she knows that with complete personal safety, to oneself and others he or she may avoid the necessity of so doing by retreating.” However, there are exceptions including being in their own home, being a police officer or working with the police, or if “He or she reasonably believes that such other person is committing or attempting to commit a kidnapping, forcible rape, forcible criminal sexual act or robbery.” Now, since she was the one who’d been kidnapped, you could say she reasonably believed that the other person was committing a kidnapping; and she didn’t know she could escape with complete personal safety. Also, the person she killed had just threatened to kill everyone she loved if she didn’t stay silent. She was also terrified and traumatized, and it was more an unplanned, visceral response on her part, something anyone that afraid might have done.
So I was unsure of it before, but I suppose that under New York law, her action would probably be considered self-defense.
I think what I’m liking so much about the series is that we are getting equal time with the hero and the villain, and it is the villain who gets the traditional origin story/Love Interest arc.
The religious angle is well done, I see it less as allegory, and more as a true struggle with a personal faith. Unusual for mainstream productions.
Also good to see that no one is proselytising – this is a dark world, where even good people can only shed some brief light.
They touch upon the ‘little man reaction to gods’ in Agents of Shield a bit.
There’s a scandi-wegian Norse Berserker cult in the first season (consider the real world recent opening of the first new Norse temple in 1000 years opened recently in Iceland), and there’s the Inhuman’s tale of the ‘Blue men from the stars’.
We’ve also seen at least 2 celestials and seen 2 references to Death as an entity, and the wielder of the Infinity Gauntlet will effectively be a god.
I find it hard to believe anyone would choose to be Evil with the capital E. I simply just can’t see someone choosing to following Satan knowing they are Satan and not believing at least in themselves they are acting for good or with reasons. I haven’t watched this but was curious about it from knowing the character. More curious about it now, so we will see if it gets added to my rotation.
Definitly a protestant but grew up in a very intellectual church that talked about etomology and translation. This was why I was very curious to hear the catholic church does the commandment as thou shall not murder. Do they actually list it that way if they were typing out the ten commandments? That would be very different and interesting from what I am used to.
@@.-@: Yes, “ha-satan” is simply Hebrew for “the adversary.” Judaism has never had any concept of fallen angels–Satan in the Hebrew Bible is just a catch-all term for the prosecuting angels in God’s court. It was only when Christianity came along and developed the idea of eternal damnation that the Satan-as-a-fallen-angel/king of Hell narrative started.
@zaldar it may make more sense when you see Fisk’s backstory. He’s not your regular TV villain– his motivations are complex and laid out very well.
I’m definitely interested to check this show out now!
Salvation through faith alone versus salvation through good works?
This was, I believe, a sticking point for Luther who rejected the idea of the latter.
(Not to say that I think was running through the writer’s head. But it is interesting that the avowedly Catholic Matt Murdock rejects the idea he must just have faith that Fisk will and instead decides that he must take matters into his own hands)
@15/SKM: Yes, I basically knew that about Judaism. But what Father Lantom said is that even in Christianity, the idea of “the Devil” was not part of the original theology, and that it didn’t crystallize until the Middle Ages, quite a few centuries later. I want to know if that is true.
@18/Evert: Waiting for Fisk to get his due in the afterlife doesn’t do anything to help the people he’d hurt or kill in this life. I don’t think it’s very Christian — Catholic or otherwise — to use one’s focus on the fate of the soul as an excuse to neglect people’s well-being in the here and now. It’s insane to think that letting a crime happen is okay as long as the culprit gets punished later on. Obviously the preferable option is to prevent the crime from happening at all.
@18 – the Catholic church emphatically does not teach ‘salvation through good works’. You are presenting a false dichotomy. The CC teaches ‘salvation through faith AND good works’. Many protestant denominations instead lead towards a ‘salvation through faith alone’ mindset. In some ways the distinction is semantic, as most people who have genuine faith are usually going to do something with it.
@14 – I have seen it both ways, and I think it’s mostly a matter of translation. For what it’s worth, the Catechism of the Catholic Church as displayed on the English version of the Vatican website has it listed as ‘you shall not kill’.
@19 What you have to understand about Christianity is that it did, at a very deep level, descend from Judaism, and the split was not immediate – there was a gradual process over about a century or two where the Church did things like throw out the Kashrut laws, have long and bitter debates about whether Gentiles had to convert to Judaism to be good Christians, etc. Even when it comes to Jesus himself, there was debate over whether he was the Messiah in the same way that Jews would understand that term, or the eventual (distinctly Christian) interpretation of that concept.
Of course, this is complicated by the fact that Jewish tradition also continued to evolve after Christianity split off, but the Jewish idea of Satan (or, more properly, the assorted satans) seems not to have changed very much from the way they’re described in e.g. Job, so the most reasonable assumption is that the Christian idea started out from that same view.
@21/AsaZernik: Yes, of course, but that’s not the time period we’re talking about here. Again, Father Lantom said that the concept of the Devil didn’t crystallize within Christianity until the Middle Ages. That’s not just a couple of centuries after Christ, it’s anywhere from 500 to 15oo years after. So what you’re talking about is not the same subject that Lantom was talking about.
This site suggests that Lantom was wrong. According to it, the concept of a cosmic battle between a deity of good and its evil archnemesis was imported from Zoroastrianism into Jewish and proto-Christian thought sometime between the third century BCE and the first century CE. Which fits with what I learned back in history class about Zoroastrian dualism and how it influenced Western thought. The Book of Revelation describes Satan as “the great dragon,” which certainly sounds like more than just a generic word for “adversary.” So it wasn’t the medieval Church that crystallized the concept, at least not initially — though it could be that it was a marginal concept for the first few centuries and then they played it up more for the reasons Lantom expressed.
I think there is also a general trend in the media/popular thought to demonize (haha, no pun intended) the ‘middle ages’ – especially the Church in the middle ages – as this totally oppressive, horrible, completely unelightened time, and that all corruption stems to that time. And while I certainly would not want to live there, the truth is probably a bit more nuanced than that. So that kind of story fits right into that narrative.
@23/Lisamarie: Good point. In fact, the medieval Church encouraged learning and scholarship and preserved a lot of knowledge. The depiction of the medieval period as “the Dark Ages” and the Church of the era as oppressive and ignorant was really an invention of the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras, when the proponents of new, more secular schools of thought wanted to discredit the old institutions.
Anyway, even if Lantom was in error, it’s still damned impressive (no pun intended here either) to see characters in a TV show having an in-depth discussion about the evolution of religious thought and teachings.
@2 & @@.-@: I’d gently quibble with your points about killing. The first Captain America movie isn’t a superhero movie; it’s a war movie, and Steve Rogers is a soldier during wartime (yes, a super-soldier, but an active member of the U.S. armed forces). His job is, essentially, to kill the enemy. His job certainly isn’t to take great pains to avoid killing people who are shooting at him.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen “Thor”, but my recollection is that Thor’s major slaughter of frost giants comes prior to the character’s epiphany; at that point of the movie, he’s supposed to be a war-mongering jerk. The arc of the film is to demonstrate that Thor’s early behavior is abhorrent, that he’s learned a great lesson by the end.
Tony Stark’s moral code, I’m not going to defend, beyond pointing out that the terrorists he targeted, he had a personal beef with.
@25/LRubinow: Yes, but in the comics, both Cap and Iron Man have long had well-established policies against taking life. Generally it’s acknowledged that Cap did kill when he had to in wartime, but has avoided it since then. There was even a time in the comics when it was claimed that Cap had somehow managed to get through WWII without ever killing anyone. That’s implausible, but it illustrates my point: That the movie characters have not demonstrated the same regard for life as their comics counterparts. Daredevil is the first MCU hero to have a clearly stated no-kill rule. (Although the Agents of SHIELD do generally use nonlethal weapons when practical, they are not beyond using deadly force).
Great write-up! Finished the show this week and it blew my expectations out of the water.
Refreshing to see a piece of popular entertainment engaged in the “radical middle” between the poles of a secularism that can’t take religion seriously and a fundamentalism that only sees things in absolutist religious terms.
This is but one of the shows many strengths. I would also add that the treatment of Matt Murdock’s Catholic moral crisis works in tandem with an action show that actually respects (to a point) real consequences of violence, physical and otherwise.
Leah,
Excellent, thoughtful piece of writing. Great job.
BTW, I too loved the series. It’ll be what I measure all other super hero movies by.
Keep Writing,
Mark
I don’t think that it makes sense to focus on the killing/no-killing distinction. By the time the average superhero comes to that point, they’ve already broken countless laws and assaulted numerous people, not seldomly also torturing their victums.
A vigilante who does all that but then doesn’t kill their victims doesn’t stop being a monster. By that point it’s far too late; they’re already violent criminals, at best.
So the focus on not killing seems like a misdirection, to gloss over all the other horrors perpetrated by the heroes.
Oh, I wonder if it’s useful to consider that Daredevil is the first of the Earth-focused heroes that isn’t a product of the military-industrial complex. The Guardians of the Galaxy aren’t as militarized if I recall correctly, but Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Hulk, Iron Man, War Machine – they’re all part of the military, or provide it with arms.
@30
I’m not quite sure you can link Thor as a product of the military industrial complex.
He might be a warrior, but he belongs to Asgard, and only hangs out here because he liked son of coul and has an easy earthgirl.
The rest certainly are, though I’m not sure how many major superhero properties Marvel has available at the moment that aren’t linked to the military – Spiderman, Ghost Rider, the X-Men and the Fantastic 4 are already loaned out.
Of the pipeline, Dr Strange is coming soon, as is Ant Man. Captain Marvel is Air Force linked.
Wasp ties in closely with Ant Man, so will probably be a cameo there.
Blade is probably back with Marvel but doesn’t easily link with the MCU as we currently know it. Namor is probably too close to Aquaman in the public mind to use until the DC films are done. Deadpool is getting his own movie, but it probably won’t be linked. The Punisher is done for a while.
I think the advantage Netflix has is they can do a whole bunch of short series with the lesser properties like Iron Fist & DD, and it can tie in with the wider universe in more subtle ways, while still clearly standing alone. If they deliver a solid story, they should easily make their money back.
“But none of that really matters, Commandment-wise.”
Yes, it does. The original Hebrew word (I don’t know it) means *murder.* A separate word means *kill.* Obviously there is a definitive destinction. Self-defense is allowed.
In the Hebrew scriptures which ended up being the OT, it’s amazing how many times those old Hebrews broke that commandment — both individually & in the mass slaughter of war, usually as urged by “god” (4 values of “god”).
& there’s a thing in Jewish interpretation of scripture that if it saves a life, u can break the rules.
Not Jewish here. But still. Facts trump tropes? Tropes can misrepresent the core truth of spiritual teaching. All that agonizing is bc the characters r ignorant of the roots of their own religious teaching. Hard 2 respect.
Be well all.
Thor engages in (para?)military raids on other nations, and is heir to the crown in a monarchic state. Once Odin’s dead, Thor’s going to be head of government and commander in chief of Asgard’s military. And he’s certainly trained for that from a very young age – “born into the military-industrial complex” is not an inaccurate description of his situation, considering how military authority is a matter of inheritance in his country.
@31/Mayhem: But Marvel will be incorporating Spider-Man into the MCU, thanks to their deal with Sony. So he is available to them now.
Conversely, Deadpool is part of the X-Men rights package (he originated in The New Mutants and is a product of the Weapon X program), so his film is from Fox and isn’t part of the MCU.
I think you can argue for Thor being part of the military complex, in that the majority of his activities in this cinematic movie through the Avengers occur through SHIELD. He’s pretty much an independent contractor on a military strike team.
@20. Lisamarie,
You are quite correct, I was being unecessarily flippant in how I presented the concept of (and arguements around) sole fide. I was a little tired, but was trying to say that for Murdock it is not enough to have faith, but that you must do good too. Which I was taught differenciated us from the Protestants.
On Lantom’s description of the etymology of Satan: I don’t think that he was giving a considered, scholarly opinion on the origins of satan. But telling us he used to be a snarky swot, skimming over what he used to think before moving onto the importnat part and the awfulness that changed his perception.
My understanding of the hebrew (very little, take with large pillar of salt) in “You will not kill”, is that it allows for killing as part of a war (among other things). I wonder if that puts Murdock in the clear.
@36 I hope you realize you were taught wrong re: Protestants, and that we’re just as interested in doing good. “Faith” isn’t worth a lot if it isn’t lived.
@37/swgregory: I’m sure most Protestants — most people of any faith, really — care about doing good. But unfortunately, there are always those who use their religion more as an excuse to do harm — the Ku Klux Klan or al-Qaida, say. Religion doesn’t make people good or bad — people make religion good or bad by how they use it.
@33
I can see your argument, but I see it differently.
Hawkeye, Cap, Black Widow, Nick Fury, Falcon and War Machine are all serving military or explicitly part of a quasi-military organisation in Shield.
Iron Man effectively was the MI complex, his movies tend to revolve around mitigating that and protecting people.
Hulk was an accidental creation of the military, same as Spiderman is the creation of corporate science linked to military experiments, but both are effectively victims, not instigators.
Hank Pym is really the only significant pure Scientist character I can think of that they still have – Mr Fantastic and Banner being the others.
That’s probably why he is getting the Caper film in the MCU – it’s hard to spin a military project for a thief.
Thor and Asgard however are different – they are outsiders, “gods”, ruling over long conquered worlds. Namor falls under the same general category being the prince of Atlantis. They aren’t weaponised like Hulk, nor do they seek to conquer additional realms, they are content to protect they have. They also don’t seem to develop new weapons, being at what appears to be the top of the food chain in their worlds. Hence why I say warrior, rather than the expansionistic MI complex which the earthly heroes are associated with. Outside the unsanctioned attack on ice giants, the Asgardians are effectively acting as the police force for the conquered nine realms. Ok, maybe more of a SWAT team, but still. Loki is the expansionistic one, which is why he is the villain.
@CLB
Of course. I forgot about Weapon X back in XMO Wolverine. Or blocked it out ;) I tended to associate him with Spiderman, so was thinking he might have come back with him.
I don’t think you have to be expansionistic to be military-industrial. The two are orthogonal to each other, as is the godly nature of the Asgardians. You need endless war, but it doesn’t have to be a war of expansion. Asgardian peacekepping qualifies as military, I’d say, and while Thor is obviously far more weighted toward the military side then the industrial, he still belongs in the overall category.
@37 – I definitely agree with you regaridng most mainline Protestants – although at the same time, the term ‘Protestant’ encompasses a very wide range of beliefs, and I have encountered (fringe) people of very fundamnetalist type denominations that do take sola fide very, very literally. Not that they were intentionally abusing this idea as an excuse to do bad things, but basically had a belief that there was no way you could ever lose/wipe out your salvation (whereas the Catholic belief is on the other side of that in that it teaches that and sometimes even gives the impression that you can’t really ever TRULY be assured of your own salvation. I’m not sure I’d go that far, haha – but we definitely beleive that you can lose it if you are not vigilant). And I think that is the crux of the sola fide argument, really. I don’t think many people argue that you shouldn’t actually do good works. :)
Anyway, that’s all probably digressing from the point, but overall I do think most people of faith want to do good, their faith means something to them, and believe that having faith makes certain demands of you or at least will influence the way you will act if it is genuine.
Hi – regarding the Devil and the church, there is a fair bit of research that believes it shows that the concept didn’t crystalise into somthing close to what we understand today until the mass persecutions by the Roman Empire prior to it becoming a state religion. And while it has some roots in the Jewish faith it also borrows from others. In part this was to demonise others and this is most clearly seen in the pictorial representation of the devil. For example when it hits Europe after becoming the Roman state religion and the conversions really get going and the common goddess based religions encountered give rise to depictions of the devil with breasts.
I beleive the common understanding is that while Christainity did not stat out with the same ideas about the devil as today, being essentially a variant of Judaism, it did develop early on, certainly before the period regarded as the middle ages, but then evolved during certainly the early middle ages.
@2
Actually Batman did in fact shoot one of the villains, with a rifle from a hidden spot. In the back. And he quite often used handguns and rifles until they made the Batman universe a lot nicer and Batman became the person who doesn’t kill. Mostly marketing that, it’s a lot easier to sell comics to kids if you say no-one gets shot/dies in them. That and an attempt to stay out of regulation, the “Comics Code”. Where comics agreed to self regulate and governments agreed not to go after them.
Without that external push though, it’s likely Batman today would still use guns. Why? Because they’re a useful tool and the apparent genius would be nuts to stop using them.
As for killing, it’s actually a very complicated argument. Daredevil went over it a little in the Netflix show, but even then they didn’t go all the way. If you so bravely decide not to kill someone, and that someone then kills someone else… Are you responsible for that death? By your inaction someone has died, your actions contributed directly to their death. Does that now make you the bad guy?
And why killing? How is putting someone in a coma morally better than killing them? How is making it so someone can never use their arm properly again a Good Thing™? As #9 noted, DD tortures people to get information. That information directly saves the lives of other people. So is torture a good act? An evil act? Thought experiment, you’re walking down the street and come across a person stabbing another. Do you stop them? You’ll most certaintly have to use violence, and if they don’t calm down then you could end up fighting for your life. Might even end up having to kill them. Do you? Or do you walk past?
Let’s go to the Daredevil show now, last episode, last scene, Fisk is lying on the ground, Daredevil is standing over him, DD walks away, poses heroically, end scene. Now for the next however many seasons, count how many people die as a result of Fisk’s actions and orders. Because Daredevil could have prevented those deaths, but he decided it wasn’t worth the emotional hassle.
And that’s the ridiculousness of it all. It’s not a Good v Evil choice, it’s a Lesser Evil v Evil choice, and killing isn’t always the Evil side. A decent amount of times it’s going to be the Lesser Evil, and by a considerable margin.
Lastly one of the recent Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD episodes went over that, with the character having the choice between killing a very undesirable target or letting a lot of other people die. What’s the good choice in that situation? It’s Agents of SHIELD, so spoiler, the character saves a lot of people and that’s given as the reason for the character to be so emotionally cold in the show. But what choice is there? Rationalising? “If they die then obviously they did something to deserve it” or “It was their time, GOD did this”. Recusing one’s self? “I’m not GOD, I can’t decide what happens here” or “Everyone makes their own decisions, lalala can’t hear/see anything”.
Or lesser evil.
@44/Another Christopher: Hi, namesake! Anyway, Batman’s no-guns policy has nothing to do with the Comics Code. The gun ban was instituted in 1940, less than a year after Batman’s creation and more than 14 years before the Comics Code Authority was established. There were really very few instances in that first year of Batman using guns, and only one was against living beings instead of inanimate objects (plus one against vampires, but they’re not technically alive). The ban on gun use was instituted immediately after that single instance, because the editor felt it went too far. Here’s an overview of Batman’s brief flirtation with guns.
So invoking Batman’s gun use is kind of like invoking the hyphen in his name in those early issues (“The Bat-Man”). It was a rough-draft idea that vanished in the process of discovering and refining the character, something they tried briefly and decided they didn’t like. Batman’s use of guns was a relic of the embryonic version of the character that wasn’t really Batman yet but just the Shadow in a cowl.
Clearly you don’t need guns when you’re a rich white guy beating on the socially underpriviledged – that wouldn’t be sporting. :)
Very late to the party. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the more nuanced depiction and discussion of faith (as a stringent atheist), though I had my caveats. But, I need to point out one thing – Matt was responsible for Nobu’s death. Yes, it was self-defense. Yes, Fisk was complicit in that he refused to get Nobu timely help. But Matt, so to speak, pulled the trigger. He, by all legal and moral standards, killed Nobu. Yet the show never acknowledges this. Not once. After the emphasis on murder staining the soul, this seemed disingenuous.
oooh, very interesting, all. Nice article, good comments.
One theme that keeps popping up in the comments, about how much of the devil is a personification, vs . a metaphor, etc. Just a quick comment to throw in there: In the Old Testament book of Tobit (it’s in the Apocrypha for you Protestants ;) ) there’s a lengthy description of Sarah, who is being hassled by but not actually possessed by a pesky demon called Asmodeus. It had killed the seven various grooms Sarah had been married to, and if I remeber the quote right, because “he loved her” Sarah wasn;t too happy with the arrangement and even considered suicide to get out of it. Anywya, thing work out, Raphael the arcangel gives Asmodeus the boot, (almost literally) Sarah marries distant cousin Tobit and things mostly end well. But the point I’m trying to make is, sometimes a being that would later get tagged as “evil” (Well, Asmodeus DID kill off seven suitors) was more ambigous to begin with. Absolutely, I think we have devils and demons etc. there IS at least one called Lucifer, etc, that ARE out and out evil, but yes, there are some that we kind of developed a whole story for, that might not be quite as obvious as it looks at first glance.
Something I’d like to point out, and this is something that was mentioned in the article, Catholicism has a whole string of sterotypes, tropes, etc. And it is easy to just slap some of them on. But if that;s done, you get mushy ideas like this whole discussion over how much of an actual specific BEING is the devil. Do we have any theologians weighing in here today? And even if we did, there;s a lot of angels/demons/etc. things that are left open to interpretation in the Catholic Church. Kind of there’s a few things that are defined, and the rest you have your “head canon” on.
A general note on Marvel Cinematic Universe “gods”: Odin notes in Thor 2 that they are not “that” kind of god. Loki is the only one soliciting worshipers (Avengers 1), and many of the Asgardian tricks appear to be magic, but any technology sufficiently advanced and so on. With Dr. Strange on the on ramp, they may be poised to just call magic magic, but so far they are standing on that super-tech position. Given Christian views of magic, deciding that magic is really magic could send the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen on a whole new crusade!
@49: Isn’t there a line in Thor about magic and science being the same for Thor’s people?
I’m Catholic. Was born into a strict catholic family and attended catholic school and then later on a catholic uni (and even took 4 semesters of theology)
Father Lantom (brilliantly played by Peter McRobbie) prefaces the whole discussion about the devil by saying that when he was a young seminarian, he was “more studious than pious”… more questioning of his faith. His statement about the devil is a matter of personal beliefs not doctrine. Say what you will about Catholics but in all my time at uni and in theology class we were always encouraged to question the faith. Granted Lantom’s personal beliefs would have resulted in a few raised eyebrows from his seniors but this assessment is not 100% ungrounded. In the centuries that it has existed, the Church has used propaganda (case in point with Mary Magdalene. we are only now starting to clear her name) towards its flock and has also been at the receiving end of propaganda.
It could have been so easy for the writers to write the priest as a stereotype but they didn’t. As the author mentions, this is a fully realized character. I think Fr. Lantom will have a significant part to play in future seasons in Matt finding more about his mom. As one blogger priest pointed out, Fr. Lantom is not a dope (which could have easily happened had this show been handled by lesser skilled writers).
I’ve been reading comics for years including DD. I was a little unsure how they would present the subject of his faith. I feared they’d resort to the blatant religious imagery and symbolism similar to Man of Steel. But I was pleasantly surprised. The faith and how the character deals with the issues of morality feels more grounded in the real world. Matt’s faith is similar to a lot of people actually and it’s a faith/morals that takes a beating. But it’s living and breathing in a modern world. A lot of DD’s character deals with the shades of grey and contradictions. That in itself causes much of his inner struggle – a struggle so important to the character. Thankfully we have an entire 13 episode season and a medium that allows the writers and the audience to fully get to know him. Also helps that Cox is just amazing in the role (Cox by the way was raised Catholic). Can’t wait for season 2.
@@@@@Umbar there’s a big difference between self defense and outright murder. DD is not a character of the extreme black and white of morality. Its a character that deals very much in the grey areas.
Also, one more thing I’d like to point out… there’s this thing about Hand ninjas (which Nobou clearly is)… they have a habit of coming back to life.
Really enjoying this article now that I’ve seen the first season of Daredevil. And the comments too. I like the slow build of this series, and how the two main characters make choices to put on mantles, to put on symbols, to put on labels—not telling us who they will be up front. Daredevil and Kingpin (or Black Mask and Fisk) are each trying to clean up Hell’s Kitchen in their own way, each trying to do “good” and be the “savior”– but each has to make a clear choice by Ep 11 or 12, even 13, to BE a certain kind of person. Lantom’s argument about the Devil is that it is a human choice to be a devil or not, and that the role seems to be out there for the taking. Fisk takes on the role of “ill-intent” by the season’s end—though he has tried desperately to pull out of it, wanting, in some ways, to try a more public, philanthropist role in saving Hell’s Kitchen rather than a shadowy despot role. He willingly–to save his own life–takes on the role of “bad guy” or “villain”. The series does a great job of giving us Murdock in this SAME choice–whether to be the bad guy in order to be the good guy. The difference between Murdock and Fisk seems to be whether one feels guilty for being bad in order to do good, whether one can shoulder the mantle of villain, and Fisk clearly has no obstacle to doing this—by the end–as many of his “friends” and “good angels” are nearly eliminated through his own fault and the fault of others. The writers brilliantly paint him in a corner through his own rage. He can’t control himself (just as Murdock has that same trait, but learns to control it) and his rage, and killing, make his choice ever more destined and obvious—he can’t take on the good mantle because he’s done too much bad. A good catholic knows that everyone can change though. Everyone can repent of bad actions, change and move forward–but Fisk has no reason to any more and gets more privilege out of his advantages (money and power and influence) that stop him from making an honest turn. Strikingly, it is Murdock–always straining this side of good choices, that takes on the mantle of “Devil” in order to be a good man, but who still strikes fear into the heart of criminals—pushing them back to the light. Love Lantom’s speech about the purpose of the Devil—that he chases people back to the Church, back to God. But I love that the series makes us wonder WHO will be the good or bad guy, and where that line is, and that Murdock could have just as easily killed (and tried to) . Both were looking at the level of threat coming to those closest to them and acting accordingly—both ready to kill to protect those they loved. But what decided which one would be the villain and who would be the hero? Did it come down to faith—faith that brought Murdock closer to understanding a truth that Fisk just misses—that taking life should cause us guilt, that taking life does turn us slowly into a monster. I sympathize with young Fisk—but he hasn’t learned that repeated killing corrupted him so much so that he couldn’t turn good, even when he tried. He was too okay with it. (The whisper of his in Karen’s dream—that it gets easier….) That we damn ourselves through actions—and save ourselves through actions (as Marcie is told that she will rescue her own SOUL through good action).
The series is brilliant in that it gives us people who make choices based on beliefs, not paper-thin villains and heroes. Until the last episode of the first season, the two main characters had not truly decided WHICH they wanted to be. The whole series seems to be asking questions about the human choices involved—and how we all move back and forth on a scale, none of us damned or saved, but all in process.
@54/Jerome: I don’t think that faith, in the religious sense, makes the difference between good and evil. Plenty of people use their religious faith as an excuse to kill and oppress others. I think that doubt is more important. Being able to question your own actions and motives, to error-check your thoughts and actions, is key to self-improvement. The best religious leaders, from what I’ve seen, are the ones who are most humble and self-effacing — Jesus, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Pope Francis.
I guess you could say it comes down to a question of whether you have faith that you can become better than you are and correct your mistakes, as opposed to having faith that you’re already better than everyone else and never make mistakes. The latter kind of faith is far more destructive to others.
Faith is obviously a loaded word, but I think a big part of faith is just the faith that there is something bigger out there, that you may not have all the answers, you are a work in progress, and it’s not all up to you – which in itself I think DOES lead to humility. I agree that the latter kind of faith isn’t really true ‘faith’ at all.
But all that said, I don’t know that any of that necessarily is what makes a person a good person; because I believe a lot of morality is attainable through reason.
@55
Jesus was self-effacing, but I don’t think you can associate him with doubt or error-checking.
I don’t think you ever see him say in the Bible, “you know, I thought the Word of God was the way to go, but after further reflection I think you’ve made strong points and I’ll change my opinion on this.”
Killing and oppressing are two common tactics governments employ to ensure people follow the rules of society. I don’t think there’s anything particularly faith-based in their application.
@57/Scott_G: The point is that Jesus didn’t go around saying “Anyone who doesn’t do things exactly as I say should be put to death.” He said “Judge not lest ye be judged,” “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” That doesn’t mean “I and people who agree with me are without sin and are thus entitled to cast stones.” It means “Nobody is without sin, we all have flaws and failings, so we shouldn’t be so quick to condemn others.”
And yes, governments employ violence and oppression, but so do religious factions like the Taliban and the Spanish Inquisition. Religion is not a uniform thing. Some people use it as inspiration to do good and be kind, while others use it as a tool for gaining power or an excuse to inflict violence and hate. As with any other human institution, how it’s used depends on the intent and responsibility of the user.
Matt Murdock’s faith inspired him to do good, and I think that’s because he, like Father Lantom, really thought about his faith and what it meant and how the morality of his actions was informed by it. He took a critical look at himself and his choices, and that process guided him to make better choices. He was trying to make himself better. He didn’t just assume that the simple fact of having faith meant he could do no wrong.
Actually Jesus kind of was entitled to cast stones (from a Christian’s point of view at least)…but He didn’t, and that’s part of the important thing :) Although at the same time I don’t think you can get a full understanding of Christianity without also taking into account the Jesus that eventually flips his shit in the Temple or ultimately appears as judge in Revelation. Or even the Gospels talks about people being locked out of the wedding feast or cast into Gehenna, etc. (I’m actually not disagreeing with your main point at all).
By the way, sorry, if this is coming off as pedantic. I dashed it off before catching my bus, and then had issues with the comments section at home so I wasn’t able to say anything else. But I could totally have an hours long conversation about the overlap of faith, morality, etc (and the areas it doesn’t overlap).
I think this is an important issue that DD illustrates for Catholics: they are given the tools to determine what’s wrong (if not right), and it’s mostly to do with preventing harm to each other. At its base, the new covenant is about love and understanding, and –> leaving judgement up to God. <–
His being a lawyer is no accident. Daredevil is caught between serving the law and serving justice. He fights a constant tension on three fronts: allowing the law to serve justice, serving justice directly when it seems the law has been compromised or otherwise failed, and walking that fine line between justice and vengeance.
I think the show does a fine job of placing him in different scenarios that test this balance in different ways, and I’m looking forward to how he succeeds (or fails) to do so in the upcoming season(s!).