The recent outrage of the 2024 Olympic Opening Ceremonies takes the cake for vulgarity, crassness, coarseness, ugliness — and sacrilegious blasphemy. Far from attempts to be “more inclusive,” as their producer claims, the Ceremonies were, and were meant to be, a direct affront to Christian values and the Christian Faith that built Europe and the West. For those who think, no, it was homage to the Dutch masterpiece “The Feast of the Gods,” by Jan van Bijleert, let us recall that that work too, was a Renaissance parody of the Last Supper and a rejection of the Christian Gospel, with all its promises and demands. What was the “Renaissance,” after all, but the rebirth of pagan society and religion in a rejection of the Christianization of Greek and Roman culture achieved over the course of so many centuries? Post-Renaissance paganism is a conscious and explicit rejection of Christianity, unlike Mediterranean paganism prior to it, and so it contains, in distinction to the prior paganism, a virulence and contempt, a lack of toleration, for the Christian claim that the Faith is the fulfillment and completion of all human longing, or, as St. Paul puts it, that Christ is the cornerstone between Jew and Greek, those who worshipped the True God and those who did not.
Rightly have so many millions protested throughout the world. The uprising of protest has to have been significant, because the Olympic Games organizers are taking recordings of the Ceremony off the web. The French bishops protested en masse. In the United States, Bishops Cozzens and Barron have protested. The Coptic Orthodox Bishops in America have protested. Orthodox Bishops in general have protested. Even the Islamic Republic of Iran has protested, hauling in the French Ambassador and protesting the blasphemy against Jesus, whom Muslims consider a prophet.
Catholic bishops throughout the world in general? Not so much. They are following the lead of Pope Francis, who the day after the outrage and with Athletica Vaticana, “invited all athletics participating in the 2024 Olympic Games to harness ‘the great social power of sport"‘ to unite people and be witnesses of peace, particularly during these times of international tensions and conflict” (Catholic News Agency, July 26, 2024).
What are the Catholic faithful to do in response to do in response to the outrage? There are several things.
First, we can, and must, pray and fast for our clergy. Undoubtedly there are large number of bishops who are pained and angry at the mockery of the event that establishes their very priesthood, who nonetheless feel constrained to say and do nothing. Undoubtedly there are great numbers of priests in the same situation.
Most of all, we need to pray and fast for Francis. His silence is not silent.
We must also fast and pray for the organizers and producers of and participants in the Opening Ceremonies. Something is truly wrong with people who think that a direct affront to 2.4 billion people worldwide, and the God whom they serve, is acceptable behavior. We don’t expect that everyone in the world will like Christianity, and we understand that there are those who, regrettably, hate the Faith. Mocking it publicly, jeering at it, scorning it, reviling and despising it, making burlesque of it: that’s not normal.
We must also fast and pray for ourselves, for we are facing two extremes. The first is to surrender to the passion of anger. Now, anger can be just under three conditions, as I’ve commented previously in this column, one of which is that the anger is not excessive. Passionate people will be strongly tempted to the sort of anger that crosses the line: this crossing suits our ancient enemy just fine, because once the anger has crossed the line, it is sterile at best, unable to accomplish any good, or destructive at worst, unwittingly aiding and abetting the accomplishment of the evil that intends to undo God’s good. The second extreme is to passivity, surrendering to a belief that since nothing can be done, since the harm is already caused, we should live quietly and carry on, “in Christian charity.” This extreme also suits our ancient enemy just fine, because it suggests that Christianity is impotent, without power to change lives for the better, without power to defend itself and its interests, without the power to defeat evil.
What happened in Paris after the outrage is notable. The city went dark, except for one building, the Sacre Cœur Church, built in reparation for the outrages of the French Revolution. And then Catholics took to the streets and protested peacefully by venerating the Mother of God, She who crushes the head of the serpent, she who defeats all heresies, she who looks after her children with a maternal solicitude we can scarcely understand. No violence, no looting, no rampaging, no angry yelling, but public prayer, singing the Lourdes Hymn, invoking her intercession and her love, which extends to those who mock and revile her and Her Son.
Public prayer.
How wonderful it would be if Catholics organized to bring a million people to Washington DC to pray and sing on the Mall in reparation for the sacrilege. How wonderful it would be if the National Basilica Shrine of the Immaculate Conception organized a month’s worth of Masses in reparation for the sacrilege and for the sins of religious indifferentism. How wonderful it would be if Catholic faithful asked their pastors to organize Forty Hours Devotions in reparation for sacrilege and indifference, for those who cannot attend an event on the Mall or who wish to extend their reparation and bring it right into the communities where they live, work, and play.
These things can happen, but only if the laity take it upon themselves to make them happen and God decides to bless those efforts.
Additionally, we simply have to understand the reality that we are engaged in spiritual warfare, whether we want to be or not. St. Paul was clear about it: “we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against….” (Eph 6:12 ff.). St. Peter was, too: “Be sober; be vigilant. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Pet 5:8-9).
Let’s unpack St. Peter’s exhortation. A lion’s roar inspires fear. Our first response to the roar, then, is not to flee — that makes the lion chase —, nor to cower — that makes the lion pounce. It is to resist him, firm in your faith. This faith is detailed for us in Hebrews 11, which sets forth the examples of the Old Testament saints who did what was asked of them and were not afraid. The great and obvious example here is David, who slew Goliath with a stone and then lopped off his head. The greater example still is Our Lord Jesus Christ, “who for the joy that was set before him endured the Cross, despising the shame…” (Her 12:2). We have to know that acceptance of the suffering that genuine Christian witness can entail can lead us to more suffering, and even to the ultimate price — our brothers and sisters are paying it throughout the world, at the frontiers of Christian and non-Christian lands. We also have to know that no disciple is greater than the Master, that “what they do to Me, they will do to you,” and that “he who endures to the end will be saved.” St. Peter continues in the passage above, “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, and strengthen you” (1 Pet 5: 10).
But not if we refuse to engage in the battle. In another passage, St. Paul warns us, “He cannot deny himself.” The whole passage is worth reading:
“The saying is sure: If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we endure, we shall also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful — for he cannot deny himself” (2 Tim 2:11-13). The teaching is clear. We live with him now, but we choose whether we live faithfully with him or not. If we are faithful, we will reign with him in the Age to Come. If we are not, He will not say, “oh that’s all right, I understand, it’s ok, come on in.” No: the gate is narrow, and the road is hard that leads to eternal life. We have been given every grace and aid to traverse it and to win the prize; but if we don’t traverse it, we will not win the prize.
This means that as we mount some appropriate public response to the public outrage - a response that is prayerful and measured, corporate or individual, written or spoken — we can and should expect that things might get worse for us, in the short run. No matter. The Kingdom of Heaven is here in its power to set people free from their sins, to defeat the devils that plague the world, to lead the world to the Age of Peace for which most long. That Kingdom, and its King, expects its citizens to do our part. This means figuring out what to do, personally and publicly, privately and openly, and then doing it.