Since his debut in 1964, Marvel Comics’ Daredevil, “The Man Without Fear”, has become one of the most popular superheroes in the franchise’s long-running roster. Controversial at the time, Matthew Murdock, motivated by the death of his gruff but gold-hearted Irish Catholic father, has been one of the only superheroes consistently depicted as a man of Catholic Faith. By day, Matthew Murdock fights crime as a lawyer, a hero to his innocent and oppressed clientele, and we’ve lauded him. By night, his inner demons torment him, and lead him to fight crime bearing the classical likeness of the Devil, and we’ve exalted him. He’s also blind, and there’s a whole “justice is blind” angle to it, which we have all agreed is pretty clever!

Our love for Mr. Murdock exploded with his wildly popular Netflix adaptation, and now millions have enjoyed his adventures in both in litigation and masked vigilantism. We’ve all cheered as young Murdock took down crime bosses ‘by-the-book’ as a steadfast and empathetic lawyer, and as his alter ego broke bones and incapacitated burglars, arms-dealers, murderers, and even bands of supernatural ninjas. However, despite his two-method system of delivering justice to a smorgasbord of criminals, he has noticeably ignored the injustice that is directly under his super-smelling nose. His bias is readily clear, and no longer can I stand idly by. If he wants us to support his crusade, then it’s time for Daredevil to stand up to the Catholic Church.

We’ve always known that he is a devout member of the Catholic Community in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, hell, even my grandmother knows that “The Man Without Fear” is a frequent Church-goer. We’ve seen him in Mass, we’ve seen him brooding on the steeple, and we’ve even seen him confide his secret identity in the parish’s own Father Lauton. While I think it’s safe to assume that Father Lauton is not one of the estimated %6 of Catholic priests who have committed heinous crimes of child sexual abuse, that statistic suggests that of the 1200 priests in the New York, dozens of them are actively victimizing innocent children in ways far too graphic for me to print here. Moreover, the highly illegal actions that Church officials frequently take to hide and protect these offenders run amuk in New York, which has the second largest archdiocese in the United States. And yet, despite his actions protecting the innocent from those in power as both a litigator and a bare-knuckle crimefighter, we’ve never seen Daredevil take down a single pedophile priest, or empowered clergyman responsible for the formers obfuscation, and this hypocrisy is unacceptable. His discretion in this matter is truly disgusting, yet for decades we’ve chosen to look the other way.

You might be thinking that the scourge of the Catholic child abuse ring could easily be handled by a number of other Manhattan-based superheroes, such as Spider-man, Dr Strange, or the Fantastic Four. While it would certainly be possible, Murdock’s refusal to address this issue is particularly alarming, given his obvious closeness to the Church. Between having his ear to the ground at Sunday Mass, and having his superpowered ears high above the ground, which, as we know, allow him to hear whispers from up to several blocks away, a neighborhood scan he frequently does atop his own cathedral, mind you, there is not a single doubt that when it comes to the scandal plaguing his own institution, our hero chooses to remain willfully ignorant to the point of complacency. Hell, we even seen numerous occasions where he specifically used his abilities to hone in on the screams of a helpless child from thousands of feet away, yet he never seems to hear the pleas of a child adjacent to the jingling of Rosary beads and the clicking of aging bones.

Moreover, we can assume that, going to Church as often as he does, he has contributed a considerable amount of his earning to the weekly collection fund, money that is known to be frequently misappropriated to silence individuals who know about the vile and evil misdeeds of the Catholic Church. It has been well-documented that lay members of parishes across the world silently bear the knowledge of abuse, out of fear that speaking ill of their community may lead to ostracisation. Given his lifelong connection to the Catholic Church, we can venture a guess that Murdock’s lack of action is for this same reason. However, to me, being a hero sometimes means standing up to not just one’s enemies, but ones friends as well. If Daredevil truly lives by the motto that justice is blind, then no longer can we tolerate him turning a blind eye to the horrible violence in his own backyard. If he is truly afraid of upsetting Father Lauton, and the rest of his parish, then we can no longer call him “The Man Without Fear”.