In that last episode, he completely shifts to throwing blame on Maria and denouncing her while shoving the responsibility of his own actions on her. It's a massacre of his characterization up until then and I can't believe there was a reason other than the animation studio didn't know what to do with him.
The last episode didn't have him in the most positive state of mind. In fact, I'd say that his reaction was entirely understandable given what had just happened before. So I don't think it's a any sort of "massacre" of Galfa's character to show him at his weakest and most petty. Human beings, not only fictional characters, tend to have such outbursts under certain conditions. Which they might ostensibly reflect upon and even regret later, whenever it becomes possible to look back on the situation with more honesty and self-criticism. In other words, there is nothing wrong with a defeated and humiliated foe finding a scapegoat for his own problems.
The fates of Maria and Bernard directly contradict one another in terms of the thought process of the angels and God. The impact of either would have been much more effective if the other had shared a similar fate.Instead, it ends up just looking arbitrary and played towards giving the fans an ending they wanted and not necessarily the ending it deserves - not an uncommon problem in anime and manga.
Unfortunately, I can't possibly agree with you on either level. Determining what ending certain characters deserve (or not) is a rather subjective issue, not a question of scientific truth, so I cannot claim that any of our respective interpretations happens to be universally correct. However, I feel your suggested resolution wouldn't be an improvement. Maria and Bernard were not equivalent characters, so there is no good reason why their fates should be identical. It is admittedly true that coming in contact with Maria's own ideals did have an influence on him, but Bernard's personality and actions took him a step beyond. In short, his "new teaching" went so far as to require an angry denial of heavenly intervention and led to open rebellion in defiance of a reality that stood before his eyes. Coming from a priest, no less, that would be quite blasphemous.
Maria's mindset was quite different. She was all about acting to help others, first and foremost, and had absolutely no interest in trying to come up with a new faith to be imposed on people. If you really must group them together at the end of the day, then Maria's way clearly represents a more benign alternative where people who disagree with her ideals are still allowed to exist, which does not follow Bernard's militant preaching of "no,
this is the way things should work and let nothing alter it!" attitude. In short, Bernard's mistake was trading one kind of orthodoxy for another and remaining a slave to the defense of an established order (or a potential one, at least, if his new teaching had been accepted).
Not to mention it's a huge asspull that the whole scene was her yelling at an angel that he was wrong for about 10 seconds, he threw back the fact that absolutely all but 3 people totally hate her, and then for some reason he said “Whoops. You win.”
Eh, I think that description is perhaps too unnecessarily cynical for my taste. Not entirely accurate either, given that the show had actually provided some build up both for the general idea behind the final outcome as well as, in my opinion, most of the concrete elements involved in the same.