Forum - View topic

Maria the Virgin Witch (TV).

Which makes it ironic, probably intentionally, because there's a lot of similarities that can be drawn from Maria up until she's at the stake and the treatment of Jesus Christ prior to his crucifixion. Watch it with the idea of Gilbert filling in for Pilate.

Yes. And I think it is intentional. I certainly have my criticisms about this show, but it definitely seems like there is a message here about people being persecuted by the Church being more Christ-like than the Church officials themselves. It's no mistake that Maria has been ringing the non-violence gong pretty hard for the entire series.

The church targets Maria over other witches because she:
1) Does not maintain the status quo of behind the scenes influence that allows for strategic, profitable allegiances.
2) Her upfront interference for the general good threatens the Church's sway over the citizens.
3. They want to set an example to other witches who might take up her cause.

As for the second reason, I'll assume that the show intends to stay true to Christian theology. As far as we can tell, Maria is human and all humans are creations of God, thus good. Magic as something that is not a part of the natural order is evil, so as long as witches don't use magic, Church has no reason to persecute them. Maria is using large-scale magic for everyone to see, so the interference with natural order is on a huge scale. Church would have no choice, but to interfere if they want to minimize evil in the world.

Something that I find interesting about the show is that - and correct me if I'm wrong - but I don't think there has been a single explicit mention of the Devil. Hell, I'm not sure there has been an implicit mention. So we are dealing with a world where there is a Church but no mention of Satan. Witches are deemed to be heretics but I don't think there has been any indication that the Church links their activities to my Lord and Mast-- er, I mean to the Dark One.

Your arguing from the point of view of your own moral convictions. I'm explaining why Church would see it as a moral necessity to try and stop Maria. As far as how they went about it, a lot of learned Christians would probably have a problem with it. This is all of course if the fictional Church keeps to the actual Christian theology of the time.

The negative came after spoiler[the proposal]. It was extremely anti-climatic. spoiler[Somehow she got her powers back because Joseph proposed to her (this is going to leave a lot of questions about where they went in the first place), and then they get called up to Michael and Maria declares "Ha! Now I have a boyfriend!!"] That was all very strange to me and belittled the significance of the spoiler[marriage proposal], which should have remained the climax of the episode.

Unless you are willing to state that ISIS beheading people in Iraq and Syria is not evil because it is God's will, then I think you agree with me.

You are correct that there has been no mention of the devil by anyone. That being said, Cernunnos has looked pretty demonic on several occasions so I've been wondering if he is supposed to be representative of that kind of dark force. Though, he hasn't done anything dastardly thus far and Anne didn't seem frightened by him (which was pretty crazy, right? How old is she, like 5? and she wasn't afraid of some demon thing with glowing red eyes?)

Which makes it ironic, probably intentionally, because there's a lot of similarities that can be drawn from Maria up until she's at the stake and the treatment of Jesus Christ prior to his crucifixion. Watch it with the idea of Gilbert filling in for Pilate.

If 1) God exists, 2) is omnibenevolent and 3) that is His will, it's indeed not evil. That is basic logic and a morality that claims to be universal needs to be logically consistent. The same here, if some Christian, Gilbert for example, believes that God is real, omnibenevolent and wants witches to burn, his actions are logical to us all and moral to him.

The thing is, most of us here don't believe at least one of those premises, so of course we have other ideas about what's evil and what isn't.

On other points, the slavery comparison isn't a good one. There's tons of documentation that slavery was regarded as evil at the time by a fair amount of the population, and to even imply the the Founding Fathers generally considered it justifiable is ridiculous; many of them strongly opposed it, in fact (and this is also quite well-documented). Slavery only persisted into the founding of the U.S. because compromises had to be made to get the Declaration of Independence signed and the U.S. Constitution ratified.

That was not the case with witchcraft in the Middle Ages. The arguments there were almost always about whether or not people actually were witches, not whether or not it was moral to pursue true witches and burn them at the stake.

Like other Virginia statesmen in the slave society, he was a slaveholder who inherited his plantation known as Montpelier, and owned hundreds of slaves during his lifetime to cultivate tobacco and other crops. Madison supported the Three-Fifths Compromise that allowed three-fifths of the enumerated population of slaves to be counted for representation...

...Insight into Madison is provided by the first "White House memoir," A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison (1865), told by his former slave Paul Jennings, who served the president from the age of 10 as a footman, and later as a valet for the rest of Madison's life. After Madison's death, Jennings was purchased in 1845 from Dolley Madison by arrangement with the senator Daniel Webster, who enabled him to work off the cost and gain his freedom. Jennings published his short account in 1865. He had the highest respect for Madison and said he never struck a slave, nor permitted an overseer to do so. Jennings said that if a slave misbehaved, Madison would meet with the person privately to try to talk about the behavior...

...Madison was very concerned about the continuing issue of slavery in Virginia and the South. He believed that transportation of free American blacks to Africa offered a solution, as promoted by the American Colonization Society (ACS). He told Lafayette at the time of the convention that colonization would create a "rapid erasure of the blot on our Republican character."

Between 1834 and 1835, Madison sold 25% of his slaves to make up for financial losses on his plantation. Madison lived until 1836, increasingly ignored by the new leaders of the American polity. He died at Montpelier on June 28, as the last of the Founding Fathers...

Thus, it doesn't matter what the perpetrators of that kind of atrocity think they are doing.