The Opening Ceremony for the 2024 Paris Olympics was unlike the traditional ceremonies of the past. We’ve come to expect a display of talent–music and dance–licking off the week’s events. Following the opening acts, a parade of skilled athletes from around the world draw applause from excited spectators.
But On July 26, 2024, things changed. And not always for the better.
Instead of marching toward the stadium, delegates from the world’s nations boarded 85 separate boats and sailed down the River Seine, past great Parisian landmarks including The Louvre and Notre Dame Cathedral.
But there is another, more important change: This year the Olympic Committee has gone woke, giving undue honor to transgenderism and rubbing their viewers’ noses in blasphemy and the depiction of evil.
First. there were the transgender performers, smiling and waving as crowds cheered. There were the headless Marie Antoinettes, dressed in crimson and singing loudly with their heads held at waist level, lining the banks of the Seine and leaning from the windows of the Conciergerie.
The performance that has drawn the most criticism is a blasphemous reenactment of the Last Supper, with Jesus and the Apostles depicted by transgender individuals.
The official video (now deleted) shows a nearly naked blue man, with the chain of flowers covering his private parts. Just behind him to the right, a red-capped man, presumably a bishop, lifts a child and kisses her on the head. Occurring, as it does, after the train wreck of malevolent faith-bashing, it would appear to point to incidents of clerical abuse. It seems just one more assault on the Catholic Faith.
M. Winger, writing for WLTReport, called the Opening Ceremony “an Infomercial for EVIL.” Clearly, the Olympic Committee, or the French organizers, or whomever is responsible for this horrendous sideshow failed to review their own Charter, which delineates the IOC Principles of Nondiscrimination, specifically:
The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms […] shall be secured without discrimination of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
To be sure, there were many who disapproved of the mockery of Christianity’s core beliefs. Marion Maréchal, a French politician and a conservative member of the European Parliament, issued an apology on X (formerly Twitter), effectively distancing herself and the French government from the performance. “To all the Christians of the world who are watching the #Paris2024 ceremony,” she said,
…and felt insulted by this drag queen parody of the Last Supper, know that it is not France that is speaking but a left-wing minority ready for any provocation. #notinmyname
The French bishops’ conference expressed regret over “scenes of derision and mockery of Christianity, which we deeply deplore.”
Bishop Donald Hying of Madison, Wisconsin, urged Catholics to make reparation for the blasphemy by fasting and praying.
Catholic News Association reported the response of Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, who tweeted, “My vocabulary is not varied enough to find a word for the feeling in the pit of my stomach.” Bishop Flores added that people of Christian faith deserve more respect.
And Bishop Robert Barron, founder of Word on Fire, urged Catholics to “make their voices heard” in response to what he called the “gross mockery of the Last Supper.”
How will you make your voice heard? Some will choose to click the “off” button and to skip watching this year’s Olympics. Others may want to still cheer on the American athletes whose careers they’ve followed, but they may express their anger and dissatisfaction on social media or by letter to the IOC administration. (You can reach the IOC at Maison Olympique, 1007 Lausanne, Switzerland. Be sure to include their VAT and Company Identification Number, CHE-106.029.126 TVA,)
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How bout athletes who profess to being Catholic pack up and leave in protest?
That would be the most profound statement of all!
Who can doubt that many in this pontificate loved the show. Remember Heavenly Bodies?
https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/runway-heaven-vatican-met-piece-together-faith-and-fashion
There is nothing like blasphemous bigots to demonstrate the spirit of the Olympics.
It is hard to imagine the evil mindset that would allow and plan such blasphemous event. On the other hand this is a world that supports abortion, with no thinking of how evil it is.
It will be interesting to see if people who donated to the International Olympic Committee will sue to recover their money, citing misappropriation of funds, and fraud.
Besides the affront to Catholics in the Olympic baccanalial display, I would like to state plainly that sports have become totally out of control. Sports no longer have anything to do with sports; it’s all about profit-making. There is nothing but rank commercialism left. Catholics ought to lead the way by recognizing this fact and refrain from supporting sports that no longer are.
Good article, however, I don’t believe this is the year when the Olympics went woke.
In prior years, hasn’t DEI has been allowed to reign supreme in the Olympics?
This year just took things to a whole new level. This is demonic, and we need to fight back. May God help us to do so how he sees fit.
Whoever is responsible needs to be identified and dispatched.
It doesn’t seem to be fair to boycott the entire Olympics. A targeted boycott?
Re Marion Marechal’s apology effectively distancing herself and the French government from the performance.
No. Distancing herself and her supporters. Not the French government.
There is much that is triumphalist, globalist, corporatist and rather neo fascist about the notion of the «modern olympics».
It is, however, distressing that Catholics do not respond as Muslims are prepared to do when their beliefs are ridiculed. Muslims are certainly not toothless and maybe hold that the constant turning of the other cheek, which Christians are supposed to do, is ultimately a sign of weak faith or maybe cowardice.
Be that as it may, Macron, the elected quasi absolute monarch of the French has a rather immature personality. The Paris «spectacle» had very little to do with the France he rules.
Besides, the most visited city in Europe didn’t need such pointless, counter intellectual «display».
What can one say about this global spectacle overseen by Emmanuel Macron?
That a secular fundamentalism is exploiting the Olympic Games—an event that should celebrate respect and dialogue among people of all beliefs, convictions, or religions—to impose, even under the guise of blasphemy masquerading as a rights claim, a distorted and divisive worldview and anthropological overhaul.
It is well known among exorcistic practices that this nihilistic strategy has always had a subtle and poisonous inspiration.
A few months ago, I suggested a deep connection between the French constitutionalization of abortion, the parody of the Mass, and the Freemasonry agenda, which you can read about here: https://oraetcogita.substack.com/p/eschatological-meaning-of-the-constitutionalizat
In addition to the IOC mailing address provided at the end of Schiffer’s article, two other convenient means of directly contacting the International Olympics Committee are:
phone +41216216111
email: olympics.com/ioc/contact-us
The current President of the IOC is Thomas Bach, and is to be respectfully addressed as His Excellency
This email does not seem to work. Try this: https://support.olympics.com/hc/en-gb/requests/new
Letter to IOC
Thomas Bach, President
International Olympics Committee
Maison Olympique
1007 Lausanne, Switzerland
CHE-106.029.126 TVA
Your Excellency,
The sacrilegious exhibitionism on the Seine might remind us of other historical events of equal memory…
Do we see the reenactment of 1789 when a prostitute is said to have danced on the altar of Notre Dame Cathedral, repurposing the cathedral—and France as the Eldest Daughter of the Church—as an unhinged Temple of Reason? It’s also recorded that the woke mob of that era also tossed into the Seine the statuary torn from the façade of Notre Dame. The amnesiacs of that day mistook these Old Testament figures for despicable Christian saints.
Are all three events to be dismissed as nothing more than water under the bridge?
Or, more recently, we might even be reminded of the curious conflagration of the same Notre Dame Cathedral in 2019. The cost of that five-year restoration is about one billion euros supplied by some 340,000 donors. Roughly equivalent to the same dollar amount to support the current Olympics, whose opening travesty was viewed by a much greater one billion viewers.
The torching of the Last Supper happened on your watch. Respectfully, then, when might a deserving world hear from the IOC what is being done to rectify this anti-religious violation of the IOC’s own guidelines, and to ensure that nothing like this can ever happen again? An insulting abuse of the Olympians themselves and their 206 countries, and the watching families of the entire global public, and especially France and Europe, also the Catholic Church of two millennia and all of Christianity.
An unworthy and discrediting opening for an otherwise very fine 2024 Olympics. Thank you for all of your work and kind attention here.
PDB
P.S. My personal history is half French and half from your Germany. All immigrants through Quebec or Ellis Island from over two centuries ago. The former from Beaulieu sur Dordogne (Correze), and the latter from parts of what is now Germany (Gunzenhausen in Bavaria, Hesse-Kassel in Prussia, and Detmold in Lippe). All of me is offended.
The freemasons, illuminati, J&J Biden, and liberals of every nation thumb their noses brazenly at the rest of the world because they have absolute confidence in triumphing over all that is One, Good, True and Beautiful. In other words, they have much more than an ace in their collective sleeve, they have their king and god waiting in the wings, prepared to declare himself the great peacemaker. A global conflagration will precede his appearance. All of this happens at a time when all good people are divided, leaderless and have wandered far from the path God has made well known that we must follow. In a word, with few exceptions, God’s people have become lukewarm.
I feel it’s blasphemous what was done at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. This is a world wide event that families watch together. It’s taken 2,000 years to tame this savage world and it’s still a work in progress. We don’t need to be back sliding now with this kind of degrading spectacle. Our children need to be protected at all costs, and if the adults can’t be responsible, then perhaps it is best for everyone to cancel the whole thing