I’m a nonreligious Joe Schmo. What I saw at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony was the blatant disrespect of Christianity on a world stage.

Even with my backwoods education, I clearly saw 13 central figures in colors and poses reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper (which inspired the Feast of the Gods over a century later, the purported muse for this production).

This opening scene was followed by an infusion of Greek mythology. During this pivot, we saw, not a eucharistic loaf of bread, but a nearly naked Papa Smurf-like Dionysus figure appear from under a giant silver cloche, crooning about nudity.

Dionysus is, among other things, the androgynous god of wine and ecstasy. With this pagan god replacing Catholic communion’s symbolic body and blood of Christ, the implication is salvation not through Christ’s suffering and death but through Dionysian indulgences.

At this point, the drag-queen participants turned from Christ’s disciples into maenads, Dionysus’ female attendants known for wild ecstasies of dancing and sex during drunken revelries called bacchanalias. Maenads were terrifying beings feared by the ancient state — capable of subverting established authority, just as the Jacobins did during the French Revolution in pursuit of the god of Self.

The opening ceremony salaciously celebrated the French Revolution’s guillotining of the Catholic monarchy and vociferously suggested Catholicism to be a continued obstacle.

The actor who portrayed Jesus in the drag-queen tableau spelled out the spectacle’s intent in a later-deleted Instagram post: “OH YES, OH YES, THE NEW GAY TESTAMENT!”

Robert Erving

O’Hara

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