A lot has been said about the blasphemous mockery of the Last Supper featured in the four-hour opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics. There are two points I would like to focus on, the first of which I read articulated succinctly by the Catholic philosopher, Dr. Edward Feser; the second — concerning the “somatolatry” mentioned in my title — I have not seen anyone else make, so I shall make it myself.
Dr. Feser’s statement, posted on X, is something that deserves repetition and amplification:
Liberalism has so rotted out minds that even many who are appalled by what happened in Paris frame it as a matter of offending people. No, it is about the evil of dishonoring God, and of undermining social and moral order, which requires being oriented to God above all.
This excellent comment reminds us that the rights of God come first. Implicit in that notion, for Catholics, is that “Christ is King!” is no mere slogan, but a statement of perennial — indeed, eternal — truth.
Many of the criticisms of the salacious sacrilege condemned it for being offensive to Catholics, or to Christians, without any mention of the objective offense to God. Some, in fact — including modernist Jesuits (go figure!) — objected to the very notion that Jesus would be offended. The argument of other commentators was that God is not so thin-skinned, the more “conservative” among them even noting that God is not “woke” — presumably because of the obvious truth that progressive woke folk have elevated being offended to a high art that they put on display as often as they can. Obviously, God is not a shrieking progressivist; that much, they have right.
All of this misses the point. Sin offends God. This is true of sin in general; but, of the particular sin of blasphemy, Saint Thomas approvingly cites a gloss on Isaias 18:2: “In comparison with blasphemy, every sin is slight.” So, while sin does not harm Him, it does offend His justice by failing to render to Him what is His due. Sin can only be said to “harm God” — as in, to cause actual suffering — if we keep in mind the communicatio idiomatum and say that all the offenses of man against God truly and actually hurt Christ in His Passion, causing true suffering and death to the Body He assumed as our Mediator. Otherwise, the Changeless One is utterly above being intrinsically harmed. By virtue of the divine immutability, the Holy Trinity is absolutely impassible. But that is not contradicted by the assertion that “sin offends God.”
The Catholic Encyclopedia explains this well:
The true malice of mortal sin consists in a conscious and voluntary transgression of the eternal law, and implies a contempt of the Divine will, a complete turning away from God, our true last end, and a preferring of some created thing to which we subject ourselves. It is an offence offered to God, and an injury done Him; not that it effects any change in God, who is immutable by nature, but that the sinner by his act deprives God of the reverence and honor due Him: it is not any lack of malice on the sinner’s part, but God’s immutability that prevents Him from suffering. As an offence offered to God, mortal sin is in a way infinite in its malice, since it is directed against an infinite being, and the gravity of the offence is measured by the dignity of the one offended (St. Thomas, III:1:2, ad 2um). As an act, sin is finite, the will of man not being capable of infinite malice. Sin is an offence against Christ who has redeemed man (Philippians 3:18); against the Holy Ghost Who sanctifies us (Hebrews 10:29), an injury to man himself, causing the spiritual death of the soul, and making man the servant of the devil.
We can put it simply: Just as we cannot add to God’s intrinsic glory by any good we do (including adoration, thanksgiving, reparation, petition, love, etc.), but can only add to His extrinsic glory; so too, neither can we wound God intrinsically, but only extrinsically detract from the glory He ought to receive. This we do by sinning against Him.
The idea that sin does not matter to God is contrary to the very nature of God. It would make God indifferent to good and evil. True, He can and does bring good out of evil, but that only proves the point: These things matter to Him much more than they matter to us. When Jesus drove out the money-changers from the Temple, the Apostles thought it a good thing and recalled the verse, “The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up” (John 2:17; cf. Ps. 68:10). None of them shouted at Jesus, “Hey c’mon! God is bigger than all that!” as weak modern men do. It is our callousness and effeminacy that render us indifferent to sin and its effects, first and foremost, against the Divine Majesty. Our Catholic forebears thought differently; hence, Saint Thomas could write,
The theologian considers sin chiefly as an offense against God; and the moral philosopher, as something contrary to reason. Hence Augustine defines sin with reference to its being “contrary to the eternal law,” more fittingly than with reference to its being contrary to reason; the more so, as the eternal law directs us in many things that surpass human reason, e.g. in matters of faith. (ST, Ia IIae, Q. 71, A. 6, ad 5)
We can go a bit deeper and recall a beautiful truth that is enshrined in an officially indulgenced prayer:
O Christ Jesus, I acknowledge Thee to be the King of the universe; all that hath been made is created for Thee. Exercise over me all Thy sovereign rights. …
This prayer, composed by the Franciscan theologian, Père Chrysostome, O.F.M. (source), was granted a plenary indulgence by the Supreme Apostolic Penitentiary in 1923, and was subsequently published in every edition of the Raccolta since 1929. I note in passing that the author of the prayer defended the thesis of the absolute primacy of Jesus Christ, which includes the idea that the Incarnation would have occurred had sin not happened, and that creation itself took place because of the Incarnation — to give glory to Christ and through Him, to the Trinity — and not the other way round.
If we consider that Jesus Christ is the King of the Universe; that all that has been made is for Him; that He has universal dominion over the entire created order, and all for the glory of God; that He is good, and loving, and deserving of all honor, then detracting Him, blaspheming Him, can be seen for what it truly is: a disorder of the very worst kind in the heart of the cosmos itself. It is a calamity, a catastrophe, an outrage that makes most of what outrages us pale in comparison.
If more Catholics thought this way, we would not be where we are.
Surely, such reflections should make us strive for God’s glory, including by having contrition for our offenses against the Divine Majesty and the glory of Christ; that is, we must be sorry for our own sins. These ideas are not weapons to aim at other people. But, any soul sufficiently grounded in these truths will indeed “take offense” against affronts to the glory of God and cry out with the Royal Psalmist, “Have I not hated them, O Lord, that hated thee: and pine away because of thy enemies? I have hated them with a perfect hatred: and they are become enemies to me” (Ps. 138:21-22). I hasten to add, with Bishop Richard Challoner, that we are to “hate” God’s enemies, “Not with an hatred of malice, but a zeal for the observance of God’s commandments; which [King David] saw were despised by the wicked, who are to be considered enemies to God.” That same zeal is also manifest as the love of God and love of sinners, whose conversion we desire, for the sake of God.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Now, what is this “somatolatry” of which I have spoken?
In his masterful Iota Unum, the Swiss-Italian Catholic philosopher, Romano Amerio, inveighs against the idolatrous cult of the body (Greek: σῶμα, sōma), which he calls “somatolatry.” He sees this idolatry under different aspects, including the disordered exultation of corporeal beauty, of bodily strength and athletic prowess, and the contemporaneous decline of the practice of corporeal penance in the Church. He treats this subject after considering the disordered notions of human sexuality that have invaded the Church.
If you have already read Chapter Ten of that book, entitled “Somatolatry and Penance” (227-244), then you would not be surprised that I thought of it in connection with the Olympic fiasco. Dr. Amerio explicitly mentions the modern Olympics:
Events at the 1972 Munich Olympics sharply contrasted with the worship of sport typical of the modern world and at least partly supported by the Church; they contrasted particularly with the the spirit of philanthropy and universal friendship which the Olympics are supposed to foster. Obsessive competition and national hatreds were in fact the dominant themes at the games, not philanthropy or humanity. In Baron Coubertin’s original scheme, the Olympics were meant to be a competition between individuals, not states, but now contests and victories are seen as those of Russia, America, Italy, and so on. The shouting, whistling, or cheering crowds at the contests are divided and divisive. As for honest collaboration, eighteen judges were dismissed for having favored athletes of one side or another and many of the competitors were banned from the games for having used forbidden drugs and stimulants. (p. 234)
On the previous page, Amerio presented a gruesome litany of acts of violence, murder, and mayhem that occurred at national and international sporting events, all of which undermine the assertion that sporting events somehow “bring us all together.”
The ancients had a few things to say about the place of games and sports. Amerio writes,
I am well aware that the cultivation of personal strength and beauty in ancient times was one of the links that bound the Greek cities together in their amphictionies, and that such qualities were celebrated at civic festivals. But these festivals involved the whole of Greek culture, and poets, historians, and playwrights were honored at them no less than winners of races and athletic contests; there are no Pindars among modern champions. What we call sporting prowess was only one rather conspicuous element at the ancient festivals. But even in ancient Greece, sporting ability was not much valued when separated from that cultural whole of which it was a part, and the mere pursuit of sports as such was despised by philosophers and ridiculed in comedies. [The author goes on to cite ancient authorities to prove this.] (p. 227)
Iota Unum laments the fact that the bodily pursuits of sport have been extracted from a larger whole, which can only cause harm to the very men and women these things are supposed to perfect:
The separation of these elements, the erection of bodily exercise into a special form of human activity and finally its apotheosis, are all things that have happened in the last century [the Italian edition of the book was published in 1985]. Sport fills the lives of professional athletes, absorbs much of the energy and almost all the attention of the young, and has invaded the mentality of enormous masses of people for whom it is not exercise, but entertainment, as well as the object of fiercely competitive and combative instincts. (p. 228)
The author goes on to describe the growth of media that cover sports as a specialty, and the absurd, poetic language used by some to describe the most brutal forms of combat witnessed, e.g., in boxing. Excellence at such pursuits has been mistaken for genuine human achievement, which, to be authentic at even the natural level, must involve the perfection of man’s highest faculties, the intellect and will. Amerio punctures a particularly inflated claim about the advantages of sports when he writes,
I note in passing that it is not true that bodily exercise of itself produces moral health. That had already been seen to be false in ancient times. Juvenal’s dictum mens sana in corpore sano [“a healthy mind in a healthy body”] has in fact passed into common usage in a mutilated form that contradicts its real meaning. It does not in fact say that you will find a healthy mind in a healthy body, but rather that we ought to pray the gods to give us both: Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano [“We ought to pray that there be a healthy mind in a healthy body”]. (p. 230)
One last paragraph from the learned Dr. Amerio will do:
Sport does not of itself have anything to do with the perfecting of the human being or with his destiny, and is of no assistance in attaining either, since excellence in physical attainments is quite compatible with a weakening of the subordination of these lower powers to reason. It is only the exercise of the will that confers any worth on the exercise of physical strength, inasmuch as an exercise of the will can increase the power of a man’s reason and the extent of his moral freedom. One should not imagine there is any continuum between the physical and moral orders. There is a leap involved, that only the moral will can make. (p. 235)
Our dominant culture in America, in the West in general, and beyond has gotten this all wrong. Growing up in Dixie, and going to LSU, I witnessed a religious spectacle in the form of SEC sports (yes, I was part of it, being in the band!). Too many other things were subordinated to sports, which were presented as having some sort of transcendental value far surpassing the actual merit of the endeavor. Aside from keeping many men in perpetual adolescence (recall Amerio referring to sports as “entertainment”), the modern cultus of sports has helped to invert our axiology, that is, how we measure the worth of things.
Because of this inversion and the lies that are part of it (e.g., “sports make you a better person,” “sports build human fraternity and peace”), it absolutely does not surprise me that moral degenerates gyrating around in a blasphemous homoerotic parody of the sacred would be part of the festivities opening the Olympics. When He to whom all honor and glory are due has been dethroned from men’s minds — and somatolatry has helped to dethrone Him — we should expect such things.
