There’s no atoning for that.

If you’ve spent any amount of time on this blog, you know that I’m fond of superheroes. Lately, I’ve been watching Season 3 of Daredevil on Netflix. But I had to stop watching, for a while at least, out of sheer frustration.

The Show

Season 3 of Daredevil spends a great deal of time watching the main character, Matt, wrestle with doubts about… something vaguely Catholic-sounding. It’s the Catholicism you’d get from a fourteen-year-old just starting confirmation who’s decided to muse about the meaning of life at two in the morning.

To Matt, Catholicism mostly means crossing yourself, not killing people, occasionally asking a friendly, but extremely vague priest for advice, and… well, that’s about all. For all his talk about trying to figure out God’s will, he’s never bothered to pick up a Bible. He’s never bothered to pray. He’s never bothered to google “Catholic teaching on ___” when struggling. For all the show’s talk about how Catholic Matt is, he doesn’t do much.*

All of this makes it very annoying to see Matt ‘lose his faith’. What faith? Faith in the God you never bothered to learn anything about? Is it so surprising he didn’t turn out the way you imagined? You’ve gone from thinking everything is a sign God is calling you to thinking everything is a sign God hates you – can you see how that’s you being emotional and not anything to do with your religious beliefs?**

The Reality

Why do I bring this up? Because this happens in real life, and it’s a problem. People go about their lives semi-attached to a religion. They may know next to nothing about it, but they’re very sentimental about its rituals and tradition, so by their lights they’re ‘very religious.’

Then they come up against something real and their pseudo-faith can’t handle it. So they blame and reject the real faith, all this time having no clue what it is. The only thing that could have solved their problem is pushed away, and they go on hurting.

This is exactly what happens in Daredevil. Matt’s friend Karen meets him in the basement of the Catholic church where they’ve been hiding and confesses that she made some really bad decisions in the past, one of which got her brother killed. And then the kicker: she looks at him and says, “there’s no atoning for that. There’s no coming back from that.”

And Matt says: “What if [killing the villain] is the way back for me?”

What? No. Wrong answer. The right answer is:

“No, there’s no atoning for it. Not by our hands. Only the blood of God could atone for that.” (screen pans over one of the church’s numerous crucifixes).

The Wrong Answer

Matt, where have you been? Why did you think you were honoring the crucifix and the altar? Why did you go to confession? Just to talk it out? Because you thought the ritual would help you? (To be fair, the vague-sounding priest makes this very argument.) The ritual’s not enough. The altar isn’t enough. The altar is sanctified by the sacrifice. And the sacrifice was God.

But Matt is in pain, angry at everything, and disillusioned with the culture of his youth and the people who represent it. So he pushes God away and we’re left with this extremely depressing scene, where the only answer to death and guilt is more death and guilt and just trying to live with it.

Not a great plan.

Who knows – maybe the rest of season 3 will get better. Maybe Matt will follow in Martin Luther’s footsteps and actually pick up his Bible and listen to what it says. Maybe he’ll finally figure out that the answers he was seeking were literally in front of his face the entire time. But I admit I’m not hopeful. How can he figure it out if the screenwriters still haven’t?

*And yes, I know many Catholics who are just like this; it’s often more of a culture than a religion. But as I’ve just finished a very good book (by a Catholic priest) on Catholicism, I’ll hold my thoughts on that for another post.

**As one would expect, if one starts with the assumption that there is no God and it’s all in your mind anyway. But there’s no room here for a discussion of how our assumptions influence our TV shows.

Image from Marvel’s Daredevil