Pagans in Paris

By Luther Ray Abel

Sunday, July 28, 2024

 

This kerfuffle about the Olympics’ opening ceremony — culminating in the pagan, transgressive mockery of the Last Supper — is a bit much. What else would one expect from the French? They’re rude, effeminate, unfamiliar with deodorant, and can’t maintain a political regime beyond a handful of decades. Their exports are luxury brands and industrial-gas production, and their national sport is a Louis Vuitton grab bag of rioting and invading Europe.

 

That these Frenchmen couldn’t manage better than a disjointed assemblage of beheaded and drag queens flattering themselves before an erect tower is the margin line for tolerable levels of French foolishness. As Edmund Burke put it in his Reflections, the French have about them “a spirit of cabal, intrigue, and proselytism pervad[ing] all their thoughts, words, and actions.” Apologists for the drag supper claim that it was merely a reference to The Feast of the Gods by Jan Hermansz van Bijlert (a.d. 1597–1671).

 

Rubbish.

 

Bijlert’s work is itself drawn from Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper (a.d. 1495–1498). Having studied in Italy and France, Bijlert would have been familiar with Leonardo’s masterpiece. Just as the great books reference one another, so too the painters work alongside one another across the centuries. So even if the opening ceremony wasn’t an overt reference to The Last Supper, it nonetheless was. . . . And I happen to think it an oblique attack against Christianity with Feast acting as a sheer silk robe with which to cover up.

 

The eccentric academic Bret Weinstein had the most compelling take concerning that orgiastic display:

Weinstein has it right. The whole thing is a marketing stunt that uses the outrage of a benevolent majority religion to flatter degenerate vanity.

 

Fittingly, the International Olympic Committee gave the suitably catty “I’m sorry you feel offended” apology:

Christians are right to be irritated. The drag queens and their ideological allies got what they wanted, and all it cost was a further cheapening of art and heritage. Never expect beauty from a group that applies foundation and eye shadow as if they’re available in five-gallon buckets at Menards.

 

But I ought not conclude this thought with spite. Christianity has endured far worse than the French. Those who mock the faith are most often those who desperately crave the love of the Father. Not knowing how to ask for His embrace, their petulance mimics praise, and their mockery attempts to force the soul’s manumission. It is not our job to defend God’s honor nearly as much as it is our duty to exhibit his grace in adversity.