Let's celebrate the Olympic spirit; mutual understanding, friendship, solidarity and fair play

The opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics stirred controversy when a performance by a scantily-clad man painted in blue emerged at the center of a table to sing to drag queens and dancers, seemingly parodying Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper," provoked outrage among Catholics and many Christians.

Bishop Robert Barron of Minnesota condemned the act as a "gross mockery of the Last Supper," echoing sentiments expressed by public figures like Elon Musk and Clint Russel, who viewed the performance as an affront to the global Christian community.

It looked as though it depicted the Last Supper when Christ shared with his followers that the time was coming when He would be leaving them and be crucified/sacrificed. But the Olympic organizers claim that the scene was actually a homage and depiction of the Greek god Dionysus, the god of fertility, wine and revelry.

OK, so, was the brief scene a mockery of Christianity? Or a homage to the Greek god Dionysus, as organizers proclaim?

I think it’s both. The marketing department had to anticipate the controversy and everyone played right into it. You couldn’t pay for that level of awareness in the media. So I think it served its purpose.

And why wouldn’t they mock Christianity? It would be offensive to mock any other religion or culture, but no one else is offended when Christians are mocked, except Christians, but they are expected to “turn the other cheek.”

It happens all the time, including Pride Night at Dodger Stadium. It’s not just the right to parade around in costume of the opposite sex and promote some sex-related excess and freedom, you have to satirize and make fun of the Christians.

Either way it’s sad that it just seems like more of the same controversy, division, and excess that our culture adores. Let’s reject the division. Let’s love each other unconditionally like someone else taught us to by example. That doesn’t mean we have to be silent, or accepting of every ideology, but we can be loving.

While the world criticizes the religion that gave the world and the Western Culture the Ten Commandments, which our legal system is built upon, we can be loving. While it’s popular to criticize the religion that follows a leader who said Love others the way you love yourself, and who radically claimed there was neither Jew, nor Gentile, male nor female, slave nor free, making all equal, we can be loving.

I wish everyone would just ignore the trouble makers who aspire to divide and destroy our civilization. The marketing geniuses, the attention seekers and the radical activists who are constantly “doing the work” of trying to divide us, Whether it’s by our race, religion, educational status, wealth, etc., let’s just refuse to play along.

Let’s encourage the Olympic committee to to reject the latest weird cultural statement or political ideology and adhere to the original point of the Olympics, which was to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practiced without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.