Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon said it was no accident that a portrayal of artist Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper was presented with drag queens at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics on Friday, July 26. As a western value system dominates, the Catholic Church is repeatedly attacked.
In a homily at the Living Water Community Chapel Port of Spain last Sunday, he stated: “It can’t be accident that the tableau had drag queens and people who are in that way of living and life and look at the real parody here. Male and female, He created them in His image and likeness, He made them on the one hand and then on the other hand, this new theory where ‘I am whatever I desire to be’, once you think you can be whatever you desire to be, the whole ground of civilisation has become undone.”
An apology came from Games spokesperson Anne Descamps on Sunday (July 28). The BBC reported Descamps said Creative Director Thomas Jolly “did try to intend to celebrate community tolerance. We believe this ambition was achieved, if people have taken any offence, we of course are really sorry”.
Archbishop Gordon said at the Olympics all people are welcomed and there is harmony. It is supposed to be a space of neutrality and ‘apolitical’.
He added, “It suppose to be a place of welcome for all people and all culture.” The cultural creativity of the host nation comes to the fore and Archbishop Gordon described the French artistry as “mindblowing”. He however said the presentation was “fundamentally wrong” to ridicule something sacred to one billion people.
Archbishop Gordon said, “Our world and a western value system has come to this point where we will include everybody on the fringe, but the Catholic will not be included, the Catholic will be ridiculed. Look and see over and over again, look and see. The value that we as Catholics hold most dearly is what the world is most angry, upset and most vicious against, and the heart of our value system is Eucharist”.
He likened the disconnect from the thinking that humans are created in the image and likeness of God as a “heresy” of today—“how we understand humanity itself”.
He said grandparents and grandchildren will be at odds about what was shown at the opening ceremony because the grandchildren will not see anything wrong. As the Catholic Church observed World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly on that Sunday, he said grandparents have a task on their hands, “How do we pass the traditions, the truth on to the next generation?”—LPG