Various media outlets have reported that the Iranian Government summoned the French Ambassador in order to demand an explanation for the disrespect shown to Christianity during the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Given that no other Western Government has seen fit to make such a protest, we are left with a revealing indication of the extent to which Western Europe has ceased to be Christian, let alone Catholic.
Although some might accuse Iran of “<em>faux</em> outrage”, in order to achieve political goals, the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of Iran’s population are faithful Muslims who venerate Christ as a Prophet of God, and furthermore, Iran’s population includes just under half a million Christians, most of them from indigenous traditions, all of whom are represented in Iran’s Parliament.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, it is noticeable that it is Donald Trump – who also condemned the Last Supper parody – whose policies often can appear the most compatible with Catholic values and teaching, even though the life he has led may well have lacked signs of a strong commitment to Catholic teaching and practice. Many of Trump’s advisors, however, including his running mate JD Vance, are Catholic.<br><br><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/mounting-catholic-pushback-against-olympic-games-opening-ceremony/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Mounting Catholic shock and pushback against Olympics’ ceremony</mark></a></strong>
The opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics reminds us, all too uncomfortably, of the parallels between the times in which we live, and the crisis-ridden times of pagan Rome in its final centuries. It was only following the military victories of Constantine the Great, and the dedication of Constantinople New Rome to Mary, Mother of God in 330 AD, that the Empire finally emerged from nearly two centuries of great political and military crisis.
Although those two centuries were a time of great violence and crisis, they were also, however, a time of great prosperity, although the fruits of that prosperity were entirely in the hands of a corrupt class of oligarchs. It was entirely down to the establishment of a spiritual autocracy in the form of the Emperors of Constantinople New Rome – as “faithful in Christ" – that the tyranny of the Caesars and the power of the oligarchs finally came to an end with the establishment of a new, Christian civilisation centred on Constantinople.
In much the same way that the <em>Pax Romana</em> had created the conditions for the emergence of immensely wealthy oligarchs, so too did the <em>Pax Americana </em>enable the emergence of a new, neo-liberal, global <em>elite, </em>following the end of World War II<em>.</em> A lesson of history is that although globalised trade structures certainly create great wealth for certain kinds of elite<em>,</em> they do not lead to peace and happiness. Quite the reverse – as we have rediscovered.
It is to the “triumph of the Cross”, that the origins of Western civilisation are to be traced, rather than Classical Greece, and despite what an extra-terrestrial visitor to the Paris Olympics might have been led to believe by the performances at the opening ceremony.<br><br><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/that-unholy-parody-why-the-its-just-jolly-dionysus-claim-makes-things-even-worse/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">That unholy parody: Why the ‘It’s just jolly Dionysus’ claim makes things even worse</mark></a></strong>
It was entirely down to the “triumph of the Cross” that an end was brought to the existential crisis that had brought the Greco-Roman world to a state of internal collapse by the time of Christ's arrival. Another lesson of history is that man does not live by bread alone.
The “triumph of the Cross” represented the victory of Jerusalem over Athens, the triumph of the fishermen of Galilee over the philosophers.
It opened up the intellectual <em>cul de sac</em> into which the Greco-Roman world had, by the early centuries AD, been driven by pagan metaphysics. Tragically, however, we, in the West, beginning with the European Renaissance, have reverted back to the pagan mindset, a mindset memorably described by the 20th-century Orthodox writer and poet Philip Sherrard, as “the academic liberalism of Cicero”.
The 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger provided an excoriating analysis of the decline of the Western philosophical tradition.
He wrote extensively on how modern Western philosophy has ceased to be logocentric, and is therefore increasingly vulnerable to the opposite of <em>logos</em>, which is chaos, which is hardly surprising for Catholics, given that the modern West has simultaneously abandoned its previous focus on Christ, the <em>logos</em> made flesh.
Although Heidegger, initially a Catholic seminarian, probably ceased to be a practising Catholic around 1917, he received a Catholic funeral, and his work owed much to the influence of the Dominican monk, Meister Eckhart.
Christ himself knew that his teachings would not last for ever, which is why he specifically warns that there will come a time when his teachings will lose their force and there will be great tribulation.
René Girard, the French Catholic philosopher known to have exerted a great influence upon Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, believed that there are no political solutions to the problems faced by the world, and that all Christians can now do is “withdraw” from the world, focussing instead on seeking their salvation in the world to come, rather as many Byzantines did in the fifteenth century, knowing that the fall of Constantinople was imminent.
JD Vance’s great friend, Rod Dreher, author of the best-selling book <em>The Benedict Option</em>, and the Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, author of <em>After Virtue</em>, a devastating analysis of the state of post Enlightenment ethical philosophy in the West, have also taken the view that, in much the same way that many Roman families, despairing of the corruption of pagan Rome, withdrew from the <em>imperium</em> to live in small, rural communities, so too does the best hope for the future of Western civilisation lie in the withdrawal of people of faith into localised, self-sufficient communities, free of the control of increasingly corrupt nation states.
<strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/jd-vances-catholic-conversion-inspired-by-st-augustine-and-wreckage-of-the-modern-age/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">JD Vance’s Catholic conversion inspired by St Augustine – and the wreckage of the modern age</mark></a><br></strong><br><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/are-catholics-really-fleeing-to-the-fields-to-escape-modernitys-mess/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Are Catholics really fleeing to the fields to escape modernity’s mess?</mark></a></strong>
Like Girard, the Catholic economist EF Schumacher, author of <em>Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered</em> – referred to by some as the Green "bible" – also believed that localised, faith-based communities represent the best hope for the future. Schumacher’s economic vision is of networks of “village republics", rooted in the principle of sufficiency, rather than in the principle of growth.
The principle of growth remains, however, for neo-liberals on both the Left and the Right, the bedrock of economic orthodoxy. But Schumacher’s views about the perils of making economic growth the arbiter of economic success are once again getting a look in, having been revived by Oren Cass, another key influence on the US New Right.
Cass also believes that economic growth is not an indicator of political success, noting that although the period between 1975 and 2015 was one of economic growth, it was also a period that brought “stagnant wages, a labour force exodus, too many unstable families and crumbling communities”.
There is little evidence of mainstream political parties in the UK, on the Left or Right, making any meaningful disengagement from neo-liberal political and economic orthodoxy, even though the essential failure of that orthodoxy is increasingly clear to see.
It is interesting, therefore, to note the recent recording on <em>YouTube</em> of a conversation between Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Reform Party, and Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist and commentator. In that conversation, Farage appears to be trying to find some kind of philosophical bedrock for his political views.
Farage speaks of his belief that God, community and country are the basic building blocks for a successful society. Peterson emphasises that lives of meaning and happiness are most readily achieved through a life of sacrifice to what Peterson calls “higher integrating structures” – the importance of service to God, community and family.
The fact is, says Peterson, that liberal philosophies do not understand the concept of sacrifice. Their focus is on the individual and his “right” to <em>ego</em> affirmation, best achieved via the satisfaction of desire, which as Girard has pointed out is entirely mimetic and can only lead to conflict.<br><br><strong>RELATED: <a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/how-catholic-philosopher-rene-girard-could-shape-us-politics-now-jd-vance-on-republican-ticket/?swcfpc=1"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Catholic philosopher René Girard could shape US politics now JD Vance on Republican ticket</mark></a></strong>
Neo-liberal economics is an extremely violent political creed. It is not a coincidence that while the twentieth century was a time in which secular, liberal, free-market democracy was the dominant and enduring political philosophy, it was also easily the most violent century in the known history of the world.
Liberal philosophies seek to affirm precisely what Catholic practice seeks to sacrifice: the lower, ego-driven self. The message of the Cross is that if everybody were willing to crucify themselves, rather than affirm themselves, there would be peace, happiness and enough for all.
That was the message that turned the Roman world inside out and upside down in the early centuries, and ultimately led to its transformation, if not salvation.
Whether Nigel Farage, or any other politician, can truly embrace Peterson’s “higher integrating structures” and engineer a return to the kind of logocentric thinking that might yet save the UK from global, neo-liberal chaos, remains to be seen. <br><strong><br>RELATED: <a href="EDITORIAL: Law and disorder; the Christian response to the UK riots
"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">EDITORIAL: Law and disorder; the Christian response to the UK riots</mark></a></strong><br><em><br>Photo: Performers during the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Paris, France, 26 July 2024. (Photo by WangDongZhen - Pool/Getty Images.)</em>
