The bloody reality of Olympics' Opening Ceremony

We’ve all seen it by now. The nude blue man on a plate. The repulsive Dionysus as a Jesus stand-in. A drag queen variation on the Last Supper.

The Paris Olympic Committee wins the gold for bigoted mockeries of sacred Christian moments.  

This isn’t the first time in recent memory that Catholics have seen their faith openly mocked in drag. Who can forget the L.A. Dodgers mocking nuns by inviting drag queens that call themselves the Little Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to be their Pride Night opener? They’ve been knocked down the podium now. Silver for them. 

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The Olympic display was worse though, because rather than just mocking one group of Catholics, religious women who have taken a vow of chastity, they mocked our God and, apart from the crucifixion, the most pivotal moment in our faith. The moment he offers his body, soul and divinity, as a perpetual gift for his friends and followers for time immemorial. 

In an A+ display of gaslighting, the Olympic Committee tweeted out an image of the perverse display and said, "Olympics: The interpretation of the Greek God Dionysus makes us aware of the absurdity of violence between human beings."

There’s the issue with the fact that Dionysus, while primarily the god of wine and pleasure, was also known to, quite literally, tear his enemies to pieces. The Opening Ceremonies Committee apparently forgot to do a basic Google search, where AI Overview will tell you that, "Dionysus, the god of wine, music, and dance, has used his powers to punish enemies of his cult and the freedoms he represents." Whoops.

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But there is the harsher reality, which is that France, once called the "Eldest Daughter of the Church," a country that counts some of the most Catholic martyrs, is experiencing an actual wave of anti-Catholic violence.

The nation marked eight years last week since they gained another martyr, Father Jacques Hamel, whose throat was slit by jihadists as he was in the middle of celebrating Mass. The middle of the moment we recall in every single Mass, the Last Supper.

But most of the anti-Catholic violence in France appears to be committed not by radical Muslims, but by radical secularists. They have set countless churches on fire, vandalized statues and holy buildings, desecrated tabernacles, and scrawled blasphemy and threats on ancient edifices like "blessed abortion" on the walls of Saint-Jacques Church in Grenoble and "our lives, our bodies belong to us" on The Cathedral of Saint-Jean of Besançon and "Satan punishes homophobes" on Toulouse’s Saint-Roch-du-Férétra Chapel.

Not long after vandals wrote "blessed abortion" on the walls of Saint-Jacques Church in Grenoble, they burned it to the ground. 

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Attacks on Catholic churches in France are hardly isolated incidents, but rather a part of a troubling continental trend. The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe (OIDAC) found that anti-Christian hate crimes rose 44 percent just between the year 2021 and 2022. Arson attacks were up by a stunning 75 percent.

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It's a trend that spans the Atlantic to America, where violent attacks on churches and church-affiliated institutions like pregnancy centers are also on the rise. Catholic Vote’s tracker of these incidents tallies more than 400 events since 2020, "including acts of arson which damaged or destroyed historic churches; spray-painting and graffiti of satanic messages; rocks and bricks thrown through windows; statues destroyed (often with heads cut off); and illegal disruptions of Mass." One of them happened just a mile from my home, in a Church where my family has worshipped.

But the Olympic Opening Ceremony organizers' response to a well-documented rise in anti-Catholic violence both in France and abroad, was to mock Christians and gaslight critics with talk of unity among humans.

How very Dionysian.

A general view of the Eiffel Tower from the Trocadero as crowds cover from the rain during the Opening Ceremony for the Paris 2024 Olympic Summer Games.  ( James Lang-USA TODAY Sports)

It’s Olympic level bigotry, and it’s infected the highest levels of the globe’s governing elite. As Princeton professor Robert George put on social media, "It displayed to the world the moral corruption and the spiritual lassitude of many western elites. It was the proverbial picture worth a thousand words."

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It was a wordless display of blaspheming bigotry followed by a faux apology that Bishop Robert Barron called a "masterpiece in woke duplicity."

Responding to violence against Christians by mocking what is sacred to them is as old as Christianity itself. We’ve seen it before, we will see it again, but we won’t be fooled by efforts to paint over bigotry with body paint or sequins or whatever other costumes the haters might have.