Daily Wire host: “I have never been more vindicated in not watching the Olympics ... [the] ceremony kicked off in Paris by mocking God”
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From the July 29, 2024, edition of The Daily Wire's The Michael Knowles Show
MICHAEL KNOWLES (HOST): I have never been more vindicated in not watching the Olympics than I was on Friday night when the Olympics ceremony kicked off in Paris by mocking God. The ceremony culminated in a parody of The Last Supper, replacing the incarnate lord with some sort of astral witch and replacing the apostles with a bunch of drag queens and similar deviants, one of whom had his genitals hanging below his costume next to a child. Unlike the television networks, I have decided to blur this image because it's sacrilegious and also just generally revolting. The homosexual leftist who put the display together, Thomas Jolly, denies that the tableau was meant to evoke The Last Supper.
Instead, we are now told by the scene's apologists, it was meant to call to mind The Feast of the Gods by the 17th-century Dutch painter Jan van Bijlert. Or else it was meant to call to mind Preparations for the Wedding Banquet of Cupid and Psyche by the 16th-century Italian engraver Diana Scultori. These alternative interpretations are pretty weak. One, because no ordinary person would recognize those paintings, whereas everyone recognizes The Last Supper. But two, because the tableau clearly bears greater resemblance to The Last Supper. One of the most distinctive features of which is that the dinner guests are all seated, like in the tableau, but unlike in those other works, on one side of the table. The fact that the tableau's defenders can't even agree on which work it was supposedly based on tells you the whole defense is disingenuous.
Now, the sacrilegious depiction certainly was pagan. The Olympics is a late 19th-century revival of ancient pagan games, and it includes lots of pagan imagery. As I mentioned last week, the Olympic torch relay begins with a reenactment of vestal virgins worshiping at the temple of Hera. But this modern pagan imagery is sacrilegious in a way that ancient paganism wasn't because modern paganism has to grapple with Christianity. Ancient paganism, at its worst, was fables and demon worship. But at its best, the paganism of Plato and Aristotle, for instance, it was a kind of vague intuition of Christianity — a deduction through natural reason of the one true god. Modern religion can't ignore Christianity. The incarnation is the central event in history. Whether you think that's good or bad, whether you believe in the meaning of the incarnation, it just is the central event. It changes everything. Islam grapples with Christianity. Christ is mentioned in the Quran. Even Judaism, which seems to have come before Christianity, grapples with the person of Christ in the Talmud. France was Christian by the end of 5th century. It's the home of countless saints and cathedrals. It's been known as the eldest daughter of the church. Ancient Athens can innocently, or at least ignorantly, celebrate the pagan gods. Modern France can only do so by rejecting the true god. I, for one, think we ought to leave pagan worship to the past, and I am inclined to leave the Olympics there too.