Just As I Try To Boycott New Years Eve

I seldom pay any attention to the Olympics.   Finding athletics competitions to be boring and incomprehensible (I have never understood why I'm supposed to care who wins and who loses a game) and repelled by the phony, hypocritical moral esteem they are held in, it's best to just ignore it.  

I don't have anything in particular against the athletes, themselves but the International Olympics Committee are a pack of crooks, thugs and gangsters, often corrupting local, state and national governments in their shake downs of choosing which city will be the victim of Olympics in the future.  I was never prouder of my region than when the People of Boston sandbagged the city and state government's attempts to force the Olympics on them.  They did it the right way, by researching what a bad deal it was for residents and tax payers and the fact that in just about every case, what is promised as a huge economic boost for the place that holds the thing turns into a huge, expensive and not infrequently human rights violation of the "host city."   When it's the Olympics, the "host" is the kind of host that it is when an organism contracts a dangerous, debilitating disease or parasite.  

So I ignored the Paris Olympics opening which I hadn't seen described in all its grotesque over-the-topness until reading this article criticizing Catholic bishops for getting their knickers in a twist over the vulgarity and would-be blasphemy of the thing.   Since one of the bishops getting slammed is one I particularly dislike,  the right-wing, male-supremacist media hog Robert Barron,  I'll get that out of the way, first:

This last point is important because Bishop Andrew Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, and Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, both rushed to denounce the sketch. Cozzens took to Instagram to issue a statement that read, in part, "Jesus experienced his Passion anew Friday night in Paris when his Last Supper was publicly defamed. As his living body, we are invited to enter into this moment of passion with him, this moment of public shame, mockery, and persecution." This is overwrought. Persecution is made of sterner stuff. Besides, I thought the persecuted were blest (cf. Matthew. 5:10)?

Not to be outdone, Barron said in a video posted on X, "France felt evidently, as it's trying to put its best cultural foot forward, that the right thing to do is to mock this very central moment in Christianity." It seems Mssr. Jolly mocked Christianity, not "France," but never mind. Barron went on to ask: "would they ever have dreamed of mocking in this gross public way a scene from the Quran? We all know the answer." Excuse me, mon excellence, but have you forgotten the massacre of journalists at Charlie Hebdo? And is Barron suggesting we Christians should be more like radical Islamists in defending the faith?

The problem with these two statements is not just that they are a bit shrill and hysterical. It is that they do not mention if they consulted with the French bishops, who issued a statement of their own. The French bishops were more measured and less histrionic than their American confreres. My question to Bishops Barron and Cozzens is this: On what authority do you feel it necessary to weigh in on an event that happens outside your diocese without consulting the local ordinaries? They could have done what Archbishop John Wester did, issue a statement expressing solidarity with the French bishops and reposting their statement. Neither man is a leader of the U.S. bishops' conference. Did the Holy See ask them for their thoughts? The word "Catholic" is a word with a meaning. There is an archbishop of Paris and his name is Ulrich, not Barron or Cozzens.

Barron seems to enjoy commenting on every issue under the sun. If there were a Dicastery for Hot Takes, he could be the prefect. The problem is deeper than the vanity of one bishop. Both U.S. prelates fail to recognize the self-defeating quality of taking the bait every time the culture wars burst into flame. It always cedes the choice of battlefield to one's opponents. It always puts one in a defensive crouch. It always risks exacerbating tensions that might be resolved or at least ameliorated with a different approach. I am not afraid of being a bit stiff-necked when it is necessary. When it becomes routine, it becomes unconvincing.

The two bishops also make the mistake of assigning motives that may or may not be present. Barron talks about France's "post-modern society" which may or may not have been part of the choreographer's motives. He might have just been looking to cause a stir, to generate clicks. Perhaps Barron has lost the capacity for recognizing the way commercial interests tend to distort one's message and blur one's intentions.

I have to admit, I enjoyed reading that passage more than I'd enjoy watching any Olympics event.  I also read it while admitting that what I did see of the opening ceremonies was vulgar, over-the-top, stupid and offensive, not to mention exactly in line with typical French republican anti-clerical, anti-religion.   And, if Michael Sean Winters is quoting Thomas Jolly,  the head of planning for that anti-Christian content as the bishops assert it was planned for exactly those reasons.  The whole thing was planned to get as much attention as possible for whatever reason.

The Paris Olympic organizing committee promised us the opening ceremonies of the 2024 Games would be like no other. They succeeded beyond our wildest nightmares. 

The whole thing was overdone. As the Times' television critic Mike Hale noted, it felt like "just another bloated made-for-TV spectacle."

The most conspicuous difference from past opening ceremonies was that the parade of athletes took place in boats sailing down the Seine from the Pont d'Austerlitz to the temporary stadium erected at the Trocadero. Usually, the athletes enter the stadium marching behind their flag bearer. Videos of early Olympics show the parade of nations had a military feel to it which gave way to a more informal marching in more recent years. Bringing the athletes down the river on boats had the benefit of showcasing many Parisian landmarks, but at the expense of keeping the focus on the athletes.

Because traveling the length of the river took longer than marching around a single track, the parade was filled with cultural segments of uneven quality. The images of a decapitated Marie Antoinette staring out from the windows of the Conciergerie were disturbing. "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" is the French national motto but perhaps we should add "brutalité" to the list.

I will interject that that last sentence is excellent and accurate.

The scene of a "ménage à trois" starting in a library might see an uptick in library visits, but I could have done without it.

The most controversial scene featured a group of drag queens involved in some kind of pagan feast that mimicked Leonardo da Vinci's fresco "The Last Supper." The organizers and the man who choreographed the ceremonies, Thomas Jolly, denied there was any attempt to mock anyone, which is difficult to believe when he also said, "I didn't have any specific messages that I wanted to deliver. In France, we are republic, we have the right to love whom we want, we have the right not to be worshippers, we have a lot of rights in France, and this is what I wanted to convey." Amidst the confusion of his comments, his agenda is hiding in plain sight. What is more, the organizers later admitted the da Vinci painting was an inspiration for the skit.

Looking at better images of it than the ones I first saw, that couldn't possibly be more obvious, denials made on behalf of the planners were obviously lying.   Do I find it offensive, somewhat but not enough to get really worked up over it.  I'd guess I'd find something pretty offensive about any Olympics opening spectacle, any of the many held in brutal, oppressive dictatorships, for a start.  In that case, the most tastefully done one would only be more morally offensive because of that. 

The first thing that should be said to Mssr. Jolly is that if you have to explain the symbolism of your art, your art isn't very good. The second thing is that the episode shows, again, the limits of laïcité, the aggressive separation of church and society legally enacted in the late 19th and early 20th century. The third thing to be said is that it is for the Christians of France to register their displeasure.

Since reading that I've looked into the issue more than I ever would have and it's pretty clear that what Jolly was looking for is pretty much what he got, a huge amount of publicity based in offending a lot of People, especially those in high places where they can do little to nothing about their offense.   Going after Christianity in France is pretty safe,  it is most places because religion is one of the most dis-empowered entities there is.   If he'd gone after the super-rich, after major media figures, politicians, in descending level of danger to the one doing it, that might have been brave and worthy of going to the bother of defending it.   As it is, you hire someone who has announced he's going to stage a spectacle aiming at creating a stir, you're likely to get a stir. 

Is this important?  I hope not.  There are more important things for Christianity to be doing than to get worked up over this.  I don't know what the planning for the Paris Olympics have done to harm the poor, the destitute, the homeless but that's often a part of the racket wherever that international organized crime racket puts down for a few years.  That would be worth getting in a lather about, though I'd like to see where the bishops in question ever spent any time on that.   Or, for that matter, any media giving such a religion-based advocacy for the least among us the attention they've given this story.   I know that Winters has as has the National Catholic Reporter so I'm not including them in that last remark.  

As to the harm to Christianity that will come from the grotesque spectacle, if that's all it takes then Christianity has sustained far more damage, already.   If the Churches had been doing what they should have been doing all along, doing for the least among us what they would do for The Lord,  all the idiot theater producers and directors in France and Hollywood couldn't harm it.