The Opening "Blasphemies" of The Paris 2024 Olympics
On Friday, the day Christians remember the crucifixion of their Lord by praying the Rosary and meditating on the suffering and mockery of Christ in the Crucifixion (aka The Sorrowful Mysteries), the Olympic Games targeted the Catholic Church and her most sacred sacrament, the Eucharist. While I know this offended all Christians around the world, its target was The Catholic Church.
We are living in a time in which God is separating the sheep from the goats. Regardless of when Christ’s return is scheduled, it is not surprising that the Summit of Christian Faith would be mocked by the Devil on the world stage. It’s also not surprising that in mocking source of our salvation, the Devil would inadvertently reveal among the world those who are devout, who are of good will, and those who are falling away.
Separating The Sheep from The Goats
We must make a distinction between institutions and individuals. For individuals are not necessarily indicative of an institution’s truthfulness. We all know those who claim to be Christian and by their hypocricy inhibit people from coming to the Faith. Similarly, we all know people of other faiths who lead people away from Christianity because of their upstanding moral behavior and reverence for their false religion.
That said, what the events on Friday did was highlight the love of Christ’s disciples and expose those whose love is faltering. As the the news came out — no pun intended — that the Olympics had mocked Christ in such a horrendous and public way, shock and offense flooded the internet. Bishop Barron, a well known leader and evangelist in the Catholic Church, called on Catholics to not be silent and make their voices heard. Other Christians though, most of whom claim Protestantism as their expression, oscillated from a kind of hostile “I’m-gonna-show-you-not-to-mess-with-my-Jesus” approach, to a downplaying and chastising of Christians for having too much concern with world events.
The group that was most concerning to me was the one that downplayed the blasphemy. Sure, they were offended by it, but that wouldn’t keep them from watching Olympics. After all that’s being legalistic! The moral error here is easily pointed out with the following example:
Suppose your brother or a loved one had heroically sacrificed himself so you could live, and then the Olympics decided to mock his sacrifice for all the world to see. Would you just brush it off and downplay the offense against you and your family member? If you love your brother, you would not. If you were at a family event and the Olympics were on the television, you would probably avert your eyes or attend to other guests and activities. Why? Not because your boycott is going to shut down the Olympic games, not because you want to be morally superior to the other family members, but because you love your brother. Yet, when it is Christ that is mocked, Christians downplay it as if God doesn’t care. But this is also because there is no concept of reparation within most modern Christian communities: acts of prayer and penance that Christians can do out of love for God and their savior when the world mocks him. So, these Christians maintain their subscriptions to digital streaming services so they can still watch the Olympic games. After all there are Christians in the events who continue to say “God gets all the praise” but will not say a word about men stealing scholarships and opportunities from young girls, or identifying as a woman so they can be in the women’s locker rooms.
Yet, is Christ not “closer than a brother”? 1 How can we continue to call him Lord, if there is nothing that the world can say or do to offend us into peaceful and civil resistance? If we cannot say no to entertainment options that blaspheme the King of Kings, whom we ought to love more than anything else in the world, how on earth are we going to suffer for Him?
Some may say, “Well, there is nothing that I can do to fall out of favor with God”. Yet, Christ is clear that it is not what we say, but what we do that determines if we are following Christ. Furthermore, it is clear that until we die, the devil will do everything in his power to keep us out of The Church. Given that the Catholic Church is the source of Salvation, it is no wonder that the Devil attacked the Church he fears most.
Attack on The Church
The Olympics’ blasphemous rendition of Davinci’s Last Supper may seem innocuous to Christians outside the Catholic Church. This is due to their rejection of the Church’s teaching on the Eucharist, as well as modern Protestantism’s rejection of Christian imagery and Church history. When protestants buy Catholic Churches, they destroy the images within under the belief that it is idolatrous. But it is precisely this imagery that the Evil One attacked on Friday, specifically, the imagery and substance of the Mass, the Eucharist.
St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians says that this meal is the mark of the Body of Christ. We forget that one of the difficulties of the early Christians would have been finding the location of the Church. Where is it? How is it identified? There were many heretical groups in the early Church, so the objective marker was often the Eucharist because that is what marked the Body of Christ.
The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf.
— 1 Corinthians 10:16-17
But even still, why attack the Catholic Church? This was the question posed to us this morning at Mass. It is because, as an institution, the Catholic Church is the only one whose teaching is completely and totally against the world and evil masquerading as tolerance. Protestants today, even some of the most devout, ultimately leave their morality up to how they feel about a given issue and what the mainstream says they should believe about it. Hence, Alistair McGrath refused to back down on his stance that Christians could attend a transgender wedding if it meant keeping the friendship. Yet, Christ said that you must love him more than you love family.
The most egregious sins that face us in this age are all condemned explicitly by the Catholic Church, but many are permitted by virtually all other modern traditions or not condemned and open to “local church authority” under made up words like “dual integrities” : LGBT+, Female Priests and Pastors, Abortion, artificial reproduction technologies, DEI (racism), divorce, and even the neglecting of our Sunday obligations; got a big football game you gotta prep for or a kid’s soccer game? Don’t worry, God understands.
The list of sins that “lead to death” is long, but it is clear that as an institution, despite the wolves within her flock, the Catholic Church is the only institution that has held the line on morality. Its teaching is clear too, and both Catholics and Protestants know the moral teachings of the Church more so than they do the theological teachings. We take for granted the unity conservative Christians have on abortion, but in 1973, you would have found Baptists saying things like this:
“There is no official Southern Baptist position on abortion, or any other such question,” Barry Garrett, head of the Washington bureau of Baptist Press, wrote in a news analysis dated Jan. 31, 1973. “Among 12 million Southern Baptists, there are probably 12 million different opinions.”2
A small amount of research into the subject is clear that evangelicals were not united on the morality of abortion. This does not mean, however, that the Catholic Church is without her blunders, or that wherever the Catholic Church is the majority in name, those states or countries are just a hustle and bustle of freedom, prosperity, and the pursuit of happiness. Instead, we must recognize that some sins are bigger than others, and the sins that are the most destructive to nations are precisely the sins that the Church has dogmatically condemned.
This ability to teach dogmatically on values and principles that preserve someone from destruction and the deadly temporal effects of sin, is evidence that the last true comprehensive authority on issues of morality is the Church. When the same cultural pressures the SBC faced turned to the Catholic Church to change their position on abortion, the Church held firm and went against the majority of Catholics’ opinion on the subject.3
So it is no surprise that The Church is in the crosshairs of the Devil, and he is using the most wounded of souls to do his bidding. But what about the blasphemy makes it wound Catholics more than the separated brethren, specifically of the Protestant stripe?
God Feeds Those He Loves
St. Justin Martyr, in the year 153-155 A.D. in his writing entitled, First Apology, was providing a summary of the Christian Faith to those who had very little understanding of the Faith. As Joe Heschmeyer, Catholic Apologist and instructor at the Holy Family School of Faith Institute for the Archdiocese of Kansas City, writes “[The Apology is] great, because it offers a simplified version of Catholic theology…It’s like stumbling upon a children’s Sunday school class from the 2nd Century.”4
St. Justin writes,
And this food is called among us Eucharistia [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined.
For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.5
Many Christians seem to think that the Olympics' blasphemy was merely an attack on “Christianity” at large, as opposed to Catholics specifically. The Olympics mocked the Last Supper, which is the moment that Christ’s words in John 6 — “Whoever eats my flex and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” — were actualized. When the Olympics mocked the Last Supper, they were not merely reproducing an image by some famous old guy, they were mocking the Holiest moment that a Christian can have on earth with God: the reception of the very body, blood, soul, and divinity of God into our own. It is no wonder that the Church, who still practices and teaches this doctrine, is the one most offended by the world’s mockery of it. That is because to be united to Christ in the Eucharist is to also be united in the mockery and suffering he endured.
But not only is it an attack on Christ’s body, blood, soul, and divinity, it is also an attack on the believers who are grafted into his body by virtue of the bread and wine. This is demonstrated by St. Augustine, a Church father that most outside the Church hold in high regard for his view of Scripture. St. Augustine, along with his high view of Scripture, also had a firm belief on the Eucharist being Christ's body and blood. In his Sermon 227: To The Infantes, On the Sacraments, approximately, 300 years after Justin Martyr, Augustine writes:
I haven't forgotten my promise. I had promised those of you who have just been baptized a sermon to explain the sacrament of the Lord's table, which you can see right now, and which you shared in last night. You ought to know what you have received, what you are about to receive, what you ought to receive every day. That bread which you can see on the altar, sanctified by the word of God, is the body of Christ.†2 That cup, or rather what the cup contains, sanctified by the word of God, is the blood of Christ. It was by means of these things that the Lord Christ wished to present us with his body and blood, which he shed for our sake for the forgiveness of sins. If you receive them well, you are yourselves what you receive. You see, the apostle says, We, being many, are one loaf, one body (1 Cor 10:17). That's how he explained the sacrament of the Lord's table; one loaf, one body, is what we all are, many though we be.6
Finally, we know that the theme of God feeding his people is a sign of his love for his people. We see this theme throughout the history of Israel, not just with Manna (Bread from Heaven) in the desert, but also in the prophet Elisha:
A man came from Baal-shalishah bringing the man of God twenty barley loaves made from the first fruits, and fresh grain in the ear. Elisha said, “Give it to the people to eat.” 43 But his servant objected, “How can I set this before a hundred?” Elisha again said, “Give it to the people to eat, for thus says the Lord: You will eat and have some left over.” 44 He set it before them, and when they had eaten, they had some left over, according to the word of the Lord.
2 Kings 4:42-44
This theme is then echoed in the Gospel of John. Before Jesus declares that you must eat his body and drink his blood to have eternal life, John reveals to the reader that Christ is the New Elisha:
Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining, and also as much of the fish as they wanted. 12 When they had had their fill, he said to his disciples, “Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted.” 13 So they collected them, and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves that had been more than they could eat. 14 When the people saw the sign he had done, they said, “This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.”
John 6:11-14
The reality of the Eucharist and God’s love is clearly seen in the fact that God is love and God is the Eucharist. Our priest pointed out that God has made this theme of “feeding those whom God loves” a major part of revelation, which the Church has preserved as the primary act of worship for all Christians. One of the most obvious places this theme of food and love is revealed is with St. Peter’s redemption.
Jesus, meets Peter on the beach. There, Jesus asks Peter for the fish from the morning’s catch. In what appears to be a nod to Abel’s sacrifice, Peter brings the fish that he has caught, but it is the Bread of Life, Christ, who provides the bread: “Jesus came over and took the bread and gave it to them, and in like manner the fish. This was now the third time Jesus was revealed to his disciples after being raised from the dead.”7
The Bread of Life reveals himself to the fisher of men. There are clear parallels to this meal and the feeding of the 5000. The bread, the fish, and the revelation that Christ is King. In reenacting the multiplication of the fish and loaves, Christ calls Peter (and us) back to the Last Supper. He then asks Peter the question we were all asked on Friday:
When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 He then said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” [Jesus] said to him, “Feed my sheep.”
John 21:15-17
This passage is explicit about what Peter is supposed to do and any others ordained to consecrate the hosts: they are to feed the sheep. But we also know that the sheep have a responsibility to submit to the Shepherd and receive that which he offers. The obvious implication is that if we love Christ as sheep, then we will feed on him in the Eucharist. In doing so, we will submit ourselves to the humiliation that comes from those outside the Church who mock us as being superstitious. We will have to endure persecution more than others, for our holy worship is something that is difficult to conceal as it requires the Church to reveal itself whenever the act is attempted. Yet, in participating, we participate in the divine mysteries and we are strengthened to endure whatever suffering our Lord and Savior asks of us. Thus, as true Christians, we must not tolerate the blasphemy of Eucharist, but be willing to accept the mockery that comes with being united to the Lord through the Eucharist.
The world and the Devil is attacking the Church, but in the words of my parish priest this morning: “Let them come…Let them come.” and may God give us the grace to persevere through these dark days.
St. John Paul II, Pray for us.
— DR
Eph. 5:5 c.f. Prov. 18:24 - All Bible passages New American Bible (Revised Edition) NABRE.
Justin Martyr, First Apology, 66.
Jn 21:13-14 emphasis mine
Well put. Some defenses of the Olympic ceremony abominations claim it was not intended to mock the Last Supper, but was merely a reenactment of some pagan tradition of gods at a feast. As if this combined with drag queens and the goal of the segment itself were not sufficiently blasphemous! The whole event was an attempt to mock God that would make even the most atheistic of the French Enlightenment thinkers blush and turn away.