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We won’t accept a fake apology for disgusting ‘art’

PARIS OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY PARIS OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY
People attend the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games JULY 26 with the Notre Dame Cathedral in the background. (OSV News photo/Anne-Christine Poujoulat, Reuters)

Worldwide, Catholics and other Christians have raised their voices in objection to the obscene mockery of the Last Supper in the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics. Bishop Robert Barron was among the earliest and most prominent Catholic critics, posting a video the morning after. Our Sunday Visitor’s editorial board posted an editorial noting that the vision of unity and transcendence of sport “was tarnished” by the sketch, which “undermin[ed] the very essence of the Olympic movement.” The board rightly noted that “the shared joy of competition [has] the power to bridge even the deepest divides” among people. In violating that joy, the Last Supper parody deepened the fissures and burned the bridges.

My purpose in adding to the discussion is less to comment on the ceremony itself than to analyze the disingenuous and cynical responses to the criticism by the artistic director and a spokesman for the Paris Olympic Committee.

Gaslighting Catholics

Thomas Jolly, the artistic director, claimed that the Last Supper was not his inspiration for the scene. “The idea was to have a pagan celebration connected to the gods of Olympus,” he claimed. Jolly also made the specious assertion that his “wish isn’t to be subservice, nor to mock or shock.” Rather, he claimed, “I wanted to send a message of love, a message of inclusion and not to divide at all.”

But Jolly’s assertion is expressly contradicted by the person who took the place of Christ at the table, a same-sex activist who calls herself “Barbara Butch.” “Oh Yes! Oh Yes! The New Gay Testament!”, she wrote on her Instagram account. A halo — or perhaps even a monstrance — mounted to the activist’s head is unmistakable as a mockery of Jesus and the Eucharist.

Another performer, a drag queen known as “Piche,” confirmed “Butch” and contradicted Jolly. Piche expressly said that the scene “is a depiction of the last supper.” Apparently scolded by Jolly for her post, “Barbara Butch” later deleted it, replacing it with the hollow claim that the reference was to a painting called “The Feast of the Gods,” by Jan Harmensz van Bijlert.” But she also took the opportunity to deepen the fissure, by rhetorically questioning the faith of critics of the scene. “I received a lot of messages about my faith … but I have questions about yours.”

Defenders of Jolly’s gaslighting have pointed to the addition of the Greek god Dionysius (also known as Bacchus) to the sketch, as though that shows it was not about the Last Supper. But adding a representation of Dionysius to the show does not negate the deliberate mockery of the institution of the Eucharist, and perhaps makes it worse. The addition of Bacchus changes the sacred self-giving of the Eucharist into the profane self-indulgence of the god of debauchery. And, indeed, the entire scene was a celebration of deviant sexuality, including an unsubtle endorsement of pederasty, by the inclusion of a young child in the sketch, standing in front of a man exposing his genitals.

Of course, all of this is highly objectionable. But the offensiveness of the event was multiplied by two key comments by its defenders. First, the aforementioned “Piche” misstated the purpose of art, which betrayed Jolly’s apparent true purpose in the piece. “Art always divides,” Piche asserted. “As long as it doesn’t move people, it’s not art for me.”

A sneering ‘apology’

Second, a spokesperson for Paris 2024, Anne Deschamps, made an ostensible apology, which was the opposite of an apology. “Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group,” she hollowly claimed. “If people have taken any offense we are, of course, really, really sorry.”

It is indeed the case that art may divide, of course. But that is not the purpose of art. On the contrary, the purpose of art is to make an expression of truth, which is always a call to assent and agreement. If the truth provokes the person who rejects that claim, it is “divisive” in the same way that any arguable claim of truth is divisive. But the predictable effect of a claim of art to divide is not its purpose. Indeed, to the extent that someone makes purported art for the purpose of dividing, it is no longer art but ideology. And, of course, it is laughable to claim that Jolly’s sketch was meant for anything other than asserting divisive — and false — ideology. The sketch was not art. It was sexual ideology, wholly out of place at the Olympics or any other sporting event. (And this is to set aside the problem that there was not an ounce of creativity in the sketch, in any event. Writhing is not dancing.)

As to Deschamps’ purported “apology,” it is difficult to imagine a more disingenuous statement. In the first instance, as “Barbara Butch” and “Piche” made clear, it was indeed the purpose of the Last Supper parody to disrespect the central liturgy of the Christian faith. Moreover, Deschamps did not apologize because the tableau was offensive. Rather, she expressed her own personal dismay that there are people who are so ignorant, benighted and stupid as to be offended by it. She is not sorry that the sketch was included or that it was offensive. She is sorry that people like me exist.

I have written before in this space that politics and sport should be separate. Sport should be a diversion from contentious ideology, not its platform. It is not the place for political statements or ideological posturing. Paris 2024 expressly and deliberately perverted the very essence of the Olympic spirit before the games even began.