Why the Catholic response to the Olympic controversy was so intense

Following the widely-publicised furore over the Olympic opening ceremony, I found myself being interviewed on TV, alongside an atheist and a Muslim cleric.

It was something of a surprise and a delight when I saw the Muslim participant so enthused by part of my response that he began clapping enthusiastically.

It is clear that those who were offended by the ceremony came from a wide variety of backgrounds. Even within Christianity, the responses have been different.

The Protestant objection has already been neatly articulated in this publication by Graham Nichols. But the Catholic response has been even more intense. This is why.

Sanctified imagination

In Catholic theology, we understand that Jesus was not only about to give his body and blood for us on the cross for our forgiveness. At the last supper he was also teaching the apostles about the way he intended to miraculously give his body and blood to the faithful every day in the miracle of the mass.

So while Muslims apprehended “a” prophet being insulted and Protestants were hurt that the person of Jesus was disrespected, we Catholics experience a heightened degree of offence.

Furthermore, The Last Supper painting is a Catholic commission, placed in a Catholic Dominican convent in 1495 by a Catholic artist. It predates the Reformation. It represents a Catholic worldview of the relationship with spirit and matter which Catholic Christianity developed and led to the greatest art our civilisation has ever seen. Art in Catholic spirituality becomes the fruit of the heart and the sanctified imagination. 

It is not easy for Protestants to understand the place and purpose of inspired art in the Catholic mind. Protestants instead, fearing idolatry, repudiated the artistic imagination. 

The painting itself depicts two themes which are intertwined; the first is the reaction of the apostles to the disclosure that one of them would betray Jesus; and the second is the context of the disclosure itself which took place at the institution of the holy mass.

For Protestants the last supper is significant as the last night of our saviour’s life on earth - a kind of farewell picnic with resonances of the Passover. But for Catholics it marks something far deeper and more potent. The miracle of the mass was an event that would flood the veins of the Church with a daily living encounter with Jesus constituted by a miraculous action of the Holy Spirit that never failed - the transubstantiation of bread and wine, into the body and blood of Jesus.

The hijacking of this holy transubstantiation by the drag queens involved a replacement by a wholly different opposing ‘trans’ experience - one that was rooted in sex, hedonism, and a repudiation of the God-giftedness of sexuality, and brought a level of offence to Catholics that was unlikely to register on the Protestant screen.

One of the most powerful Catholic Episcopal voices in the media is the American Catholic bishop, Robert Baron. In recent online posts and interviews he has suggested that our response to the outrage ought to be two-fold.

Friends, my thoughts on the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. #Olimpiadas2024 #OlympicGames pic.twitter.com/xU1ljFMZft

— Bishop Robert Barron (@BishopBarron) July 27, 2024

Firstly, to recognise that this was a direct assault on Catholic Christianity. Catholicism is a threat to the hyper-sexualised secular culture represented by the opening ceremony. Da Vinci’s Last Supper was deliberately targeted. 

Not only was it the replacement of a miraculous holy ‘trans’ action of the Holy Spirit with an unholy one, but the moment was a “queering of the Mass” as the lesbian who replaced Jesus in the tableau was an attack on the daily spirituality of the Catholic Church.

Why was Catholicism a threat? In part because unlike some Protestants, we have not adjusted the way we read our Bibles to accommodate a progressive shift in sexual ethics. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the result of 2,000 years of theological experience and prayer. The Catholic Church remains formally and officially intransigent with its commitment to celibacy, holiness, the indissolubility of marriage and sexual contingency.

A second point made by Bishop Baron was that this was not just a moment for “turning the other cheek” as Christians are required to do, but to also raise our voice in protest against the blaspheming of our saviour and the miracle of the mass he instituted.

Enough

And so we have been raising our voices. And the perpetrators of the outrage have responded. They have responded with fear and anxiety about the loss of advertising as a number of companies have withdrawn their sponsorship and by making a pretend deceitful apology - which has not been accepted.

Among the spiritually and ethically sensitive who viewed the travesty of the Olympic opening ceremony with horror, the Catholic Church experienced the hijacking of its sacred art with a particular revulsion and horror. We will not stop raising our voices in protest.