By Solène Tadié

PARIS — The Paris Olympic Games came to a close on the evening of Aug. 11, after a ceremony at the Stade de France, with the country’s worldwide reputation still tarnished. The neutral tone of the show, despite some gloomy scenes with little sporting or French content, will not erase the international outrage caused by the Opening Ceremony, which took place in the idyllic setting of the Seine in the heart of Paris on July 26.  

The event was supposed to be a moment of universality in which all the peoples of the world could unite, as the Olympics traditionally call for a period of peace and truce in conflicts between nations. However, the few beautiful scenes of technical prowess were overshadowed by vulgar and blasphemous scenes watched by almost a billion television viewers, leading to fears of the worst for the Closing Ceremony. 

From the drag-queen parody of Christ’s Last Supper on Maundy Thursday, to the “throuple” (threesome) where two men kissed, and the painting showing Queen Marie Antoinette beheaded, nothing was missing to make this supposedly “inclusive” show the perfect expression of the self-referentiality of small minorities in the major Western capital cities who don’t mind excluding de facto millions of religious believers around the world. 

French and Christian patriots could only feel ashamed when thinking of the parents all over the world who trusted France’s good taste in allowing their children to watch the show, whose obscene scenes even had to be cut from the broadcast in some countries, including the United States.  

For many, it will be hard to forget the contempt for childhood that emerged from a show that didn’t hesitate to include in its parody of the Last Supper a little girl, barely 10 years old, placing her next to a drag queen with a bare testicle and a singer portraying Dionysus in the simplest of garb. 

But while the Olympics Organizing Committee’s apology failed to convince a large proportion of the ceremony’s critics, it’s worth reminding all those for whom the sacred, the good and the beautiful still mean something that these performances, aimed at pseudo-elites perched in their ivory towers, do not reflect France’s soul.  

As the whirlwind of the event dissipates, dusting off the worldwide scandal of the Games’ opening, we must remind its organizers and the members of the French government who applauded their transgressiveness that the world-honored landmarks that stood as the background for the ceremony along the Seine, from Notre Dame Cathedral to the Palais du Louvre, are the work of Catholic kings.   

These are the capital’s landmarks — along with monuments such as the Invalides (whose dome mysteriously lost its cross on the official poster for the event), Sacré-Coeur in Montmartre and the Sainte-Chapelle — that attract millions of visitors every year, as constant reminders that nothing is as unifying and timeless as classical art, especially if it has faith as its vector.  

The modern Olympic Games themselves, which every four years bring joy to people of all generations and social backgrounds, would not exist without the association between the Catholic educator Pierre de Coubertin and the Dominican friar Henri Didon, who coined the International Olympic Committee motto Citius, Altius, Fortius (“Faster, Higher, Stronger”). 

This Catholic religion that small-time transgressive people are so fond of trampling underfoot under the pretext of a right to blasphemy is so intrinsically universal that spectators the world over — many of whom are not Christian — immediately recognized the reference to Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of Christ’s Last Supper, despite the attempts of some commentators to deny the obvious. 

While the history of France, having started 1,500 years ago with the baptism of King Clovis by St. Remigius, is inextricably linked with Christianity, the destiny of the city of Paris itself was very often linked to that of the great saints of the centuries that preceded us, starting with St. Geneviève (420-502), the city’s patron saint who helped save it in her century from invasion by the Huns and then the Germans.  

The non-exhaustive list of saints who were born in Paris or carried out part of their life’s mission there includes such great figures as St. Denis (third century), St. Clotide (475-548), St. Marcel (360-436), St. Germain (496-576), King St. Louis (1214-1270), Blessed Pope Innocent V (1225-1276), Blessed Frédéric Ozanam (1813-1843), St. Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916) and St. Vincent de Paul (1581-1660).  

Considered the theological capital of the medieval world, it attracted such prestigious figures as St. Thomas Aquinas, Peter Abelard, Peter Lombard and Jean Gerson. It was in Montmartre that Ignatius Loyola and his companions founded the Society of Jesus in 1534. It was also in the Rue du Bac in the heart of Paris that the Virgin Mary appeared to St. Catherine Labouré in 1830, giving birth to the worldwide devotion to the Miraculous Medal. 

The French Revolution, the long tradition of anticlericalism that followed it, and the rampant contemporary de-Christianization of Europe have not succeeded in expunging this profound identity from the capital, which today boasts some 140 churches and chapels that continue to shape its beating heart. The worldwide emotion provoked by the fire at Notre Dame in 2019 and the incredible outpouring of donations that followed had already sounded an effective reminder of this reality.   

Interestingly enough, these attempts to wipe the slate clean of Paris’ Catholic heritage and make a mockery of the founding act of Christianity have had an unexpected effect. At a time when so many commentators are declaring that our era has already marked the end of Christendom, the outpouring of wrathful reaction to the Opening Ceremony seems to have told the rest of the world that it has not yet said its last word.  

Launched on social networks the day after the Opening Ceremony, the hashtag “My faith is not a game,” accompanied by an image of the Olympic rings covered with a black cross, was shared by tens of thousands of accounts. 

While activists from the Madrid-based CitizenGo organization were arrested in the French capital for protesting on board a bus against attacks on the faith of Christians, France distinguished itself by an unusual dynamic of protest, starting with the Church hierarchy, who spoke out against a form of relentlessness towards Christians who are perceived as easy victims, unlikely to fight back.

Speaking to the Register, the Olympics’ Catholic delegate, Bishop Emmanuel Gobilliard, wished that “the authors of these works and their supporters were capable of ‘blaspheming’ against themselves, in other words, of questioning themselves and their own ideas and points of view,” instead of always “targeting the creeds and dogmas of others, and preferably those of Christians.” 

From Armenia, where he was on a humanitarian mission, Dominican friar Paul Adrien d’Hardemare, a well-known influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers on social networks, known for his debonair, benevolent attitude, astonished his followers by calling on Christians to stop confusing mercy with cowardice. “I belong to a generation of Christians who won’t accept being spat at,” he warned in a video published on July 27. 

These words seem to have struck a chord with young Catholics, with the Dominican’s YouTube channel, entitled L’Amour Vaincra (“Love Will Prevail”), adding 100,000 followers in just a few days. Determined to make this craze fruitful, the French friar has announced his intention to launch a pressure group to defend Christians politically.  

Every cloud has a silver lining. The woke agenda that never ceases to desecrate the figure of Christ and attempts to make a clean sweep of the past is provoking an unexpected backlash. It would seem that the new generations have taken it into their heads to belie the diagnoses of a dead and buried Christendom. Faith is still alive in France and around the world. 

This articel was first published at The National Catholic Register, EWTN`s Norway newspartner