For many millions of sports followers and top class athletes worldwide, being selected to take part in the Olympic Games is rightly considered to be a great national honour.
The qualifying standards are high, and winning a medal in an Olympic final is extraordinarily difficult, and regarded as the ultimate testimony of human achievement in sport.
Fair play is always the name of the game, so how ironic that at the Paris Olympics opening, a small societal minority, whom nobody wishes to mock, were allowed to mock billions of Christians, and provoke condemnation by peoples of many faiths and none.
What was presented during the opening ceremony at the Paris Olympic Games and offended people worldwide, had nothing to do with sport, and served only to belittle and downgrade the international competitions commencing. The organisers of the opening for the most prestigious 2024 sporting event apparently decided that a worldwide audience would somehow find it amusing or entertaining to watch a tasteless and blasphemous mockery of the Last Supper by a group of drag queens, a transgender model and dancers.
Why such an obscene and insulting parody of what is for Catholics and many other Christians one of the most sacred events in the life of Christ and a central tenet of their faith, was permitted by the organisers hasn’t been explained.
What is much easier to explain is how the mainstream media afterwards reacted to what took place – and for the most part it was a case of turning a totally ‘blind eye and deaf ear’ to what was a strong news story.
Absence of balance or silence have become the predictable media reactions, and demonstrate the levels of anti-religious secular activism and bias permeating the ranks of organisations which still claim to support ‘freedom of expression’ and the ‘truth’ in the news.
One illustration of this came in an Associated Press article, headed: “Drag queens shine at Olympics opening, but ‘Last Supper’ tableau draws criticism. “And this story – from one of the world’s biggest professional news organisations -began thus: “In an unprecedented display of inclusivity, drag queens took centre stage at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony, showcasing the vibrant and influential role of the French LGBTQ+ community – while attracting criticism over a tableau reminiscent of ‘The Last Supper’.”
It was an unusual opening for an article from what would be regarded as an “objective” international news source, but perhaps it pointed at the underlying political significance of its inclusion.
There’s already been serious Olympic controversy this week over two boxers competing in the women’s events, who were ruled out from the 2023 Women’s World Boxing Championships after they failed sex tests, but were deemed eligible by the Olympics Committee.
One of them punched the Italian women’s 66k champion so heavily and damagingly, that the fight ended after just 46 seconds, causing Irish boxing legend Barry McGuigan to comment afterwards: “So here is the IOC idea of fairness in the 2024 Olympics, shocking and unfair on women and girls.”
Inclusiveness for a minority is risking exclusion of all biological women, it appears.
In any event, with something like 2.3 billion Christians worldwide, the anti-Christian opening parody created widespread controversy and criticism. While French President, Emmanuel Macron praised what was presented as a ‘great spectacle’, and the Olympics committee said it wasn’t intended to mock Christian beliefs, the French bishops saw it otherwise, describing it as derisive and “a mockery of Christianity.”
And welcoming their criticism, Germany’s Cardinal Gerhard Muller called the display a “sacrilegious and vulgar representation” offending millions of people, and an “assault to all religions”, and he called on leaders of other religions to speak out. It sullied the “noble face of the Olympics” he said. Oddly, in Ireland, almost total silence on the opening ceremony issue in both secular and religious circles has been the response.
Profaning the sacredness and holiness of the Last Supper and the Eucharistic mystery should hardly have a place on plans for any Olympic opening ceremony, unless mockery is the intention.
If one was to judge from remarks made online afterwards by some of those who participated, it maybe explains it.