Paris shame shows West’s true contempt for Christianity

French actor Philippe Katerine appearing as the Greek god Dionysus during the Paris Olympics opening ceremony. Picture: Supplied

The scenes at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony were a perfect example of what Pope John Paul II called “the culture of death”. Among a grotesque, ugly, sick event was the transvestite parody of Jesus and the Last Supper, and what Christians believe was the first holy communion, the first Eucharist.

The whole event was ugly, negative, hostile to every good tradition in France and Western civilisation. The organisers subsequently apologised and demonstrated their embarrassment, though probably only political embarrassment, by eradicating every image they can. The denial that the scene represented the Last Supper is absurd, given that it was overwhelmingly seen as representing the Last Supper. The ceremony was not only an attack on Christianity, but on human dignity and the wellsprings of meaning.

It’s worth noting the fraudulent radicalism and “courage” of would-be subversive transgressors. They never demean and insult Islam this way because they are cowards. Islamist extremists would kill them for treating Islam the way they treat Christianity.

Let me not be misunderstood. I don’t want anyone to demean or attack Islam the way the Paris opening ceremony demeaned and attacked Christianity.

Islam, like every religious tradition, should be treated with respect. People’s most sacred religious beliefs should always be approached decently. Nor should anyone react with violence. But they should react culturally and politically.

Another question: If you want to celebrate transvestites, why is it necessary to spit at Christianity?

The Paris Olympics foulness illustrates the cultural self-hatred and contempt Western artistic elites have for their own civilisation. It’s a human death wish and civilisational suicide. The Paris grotesquerie was condemned by Christian leaders, many other faith leaders, and civic leaders internationally.

A restored version from the original painting 'The Last Supper' by Leonardo da Vinci, 1495.

Bishop Robert Barron, of the prodigiously successful Word on Fire internet ministry, commented: “France, whose culture – and I mean the honouring of the individual, of human rights, of freedom – is grounded very much in Christianity, felt the right thing to do is to mock the Christian faith …

“What’s interesting here is this deeply secularist, postmodern society knows who its enemy is. They’re naming it. And we should believe them … Christians should always resist evil and I think we have indeed become too weak in the face of our cultural antagonists. Jesus’s command to turn the other cheek is by no means equivalent to passivity.”

By coincidence, I’ve spent the past few days attending the Napa Institute in California, one of the most absorbing annual gatherings of Catholics in the US, though there were a good many non-Catholic speakers, among them the famous Presbyterian author, Carl Trueman. Napa’s mission statement reads: “The Napa Institute empowers Catholic leaders to renew the church and transform the culture … (It) is a Catholic lay apostolate serving lay and ordained Catholics focused on liturgics, faith formation and fraternity.”

Pope John Paul II in November 1986

I found it a moving, diverse, richly rewarding event. Though all 700 participants were believers, there was an astonishing variety of folks, including priests and nuns of many types, from nuns whose sole vocation was prayer to others focused on school education, groups helping the homeless, others providing low-cost Catholic education to impoverished families, liturgical movements, Catholic scholars and liberal arts college representatives, people promoting the huge growth in classical school education, filmmakers determined to inject Christianity back into popular culture, pro-life groups, and many others.

I’ve been inquiring lately about what lessons the success of early post-apostolic Christians, after Jesus’s mission and after the last of the Apostles, might hold for today’s Christians.

I was inspired by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s measured conclusion that contemporary Western society has become truly neo-pagan.

Outside Napa, I explored this with the renowned biographer of JP II, George Weigel, one of the most important Christian thinkers today. He told me: “The blasphemous mockery of the Last Supper at the Olympic opening ceremony didn’t even rise to the level of neo-paganism; it was merely perverse and deranged … It’s certainly true that biblical religion is subject to vilification.”

French Artistic Director for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games Thomas Jolly, poses near the River Seine with The Eiffel Tower in the background in Paris,

In a recent issue of First Things, the best of the Christian journals I read, Weigel cited six signs of new growth and hope in the American Catholic Church: Catholic colleges and universities, many of them relatively new, which are faithful to Christian teaching; Campus Catholic Ministry, especially the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, which grew out of World Youth Day and now sends 1000 young missionaries to 220 campuses around the world; adult religious formation including Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire ministry; the growth of religiously faithful orders of priests and nuns, and; the renewal of Christian belief and practice in schools and parishes.

At Napa itself the star turn was the brilliant young Monsignor James Shea, president of the University of Mary in North Dakota. He gave a superb lecture on what it means to be human. One, he said, we are creatures, created. Two, we are fallen.

As GK Chesterton argued, the fall is surely the one element of Christian belief proven beyond doubt. And three, we are redeemed, which fills us with hope and with purpose.

I interviewed Shea at some length before the Paris nonsense was known. He thinks labelling today’s culture neo-pagan is a little imprecise: “CS Lewis responded to this a long time ago, saying ‘give us the pagans, they’re just Christians in the making’.

Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Robert E. Barron.

“It’s true that both the Graeco-Roman vision (prevalent during Christianity’s first 300 years) and the modern progressive vision are antithetical in various ways to Christianity. The difficulty is that the challenge today is more complicated for us because many of the strongest tenets of today are direct corruptions of Christian doctrine. We’re in a post-Christian time which is unprecedented.

“We’ve never had, until now, a society that was once thoroughly Christian and, not through war or conquest but through a process led by the intellectual elites, has rid itself of its Christian basis.”

Shea preaches the fullest Christian engagement with the world because of Christian love for the world. He’s also full of hope. The new religions typically pursue revolution, the revolution always fails and this leads to a revival of Christianity.

And: “The most important thing is the way we look at the battle we’re called upon to fight in the New Testament. What’s clear is there’s a spirit of conquering hope about it, because Jesus has arranged everything so that as long as we don’t give up we always win. In the letter to the Romans St Paul calls God a God of endurance and encouragement. This is great. Not the God of success but the God of endurance and encouragement. God encourages us and we need to persevere. If we persevere the outcome is secure for us. This is super, super hopeful.”

There is great energy in the US. Unlike the grotesque Paris fraud, much of this energy is for good.