Since the opening of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris on June 29, 2024, a lot of water has been spilled in the Seine, as well as a lot of ink, electronic or not, in the press of the world’s major media and in various episcopal conferences in Europe and the United States.
Not a single reference has been made to the dozen (12!) people killed in the Charlie Hebdo attack 10 years ago by an act of fanatical islamist religious violence.
And yet . . .
The discussion about whether the criticized production is an imitation of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper or an imitation of “Le Festin des dieux” (1635-1640) by Jan Harmensz van Bijlert, which hangs in the Dijon Museum and which is probably itself a caricature of Da Vinci’s Last Supper, remains open.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feast_of_the_Gods_(van_Bijlert)
What the critical Last Supper experts should have noticed, however, is the fact that the table was empty during the staging.
The conceptual proximity to the Last Supper – as the institution of the Eucharist- is therefore in the mind of the critical viewer, but not in the production itself. The fact that a well-fed woman sits in Jesus’ place is also more reminiscent of world-famous French cuisine than of a woman in the priesthood, which is rejected by the official critics of the production anyway. –
The fact that Mary Magdalene was the first person whom the Risen Christ met and whom he commissioned to proclaim his resurrection for the first time is traditionally lost on those loyal to the à la carte line. The fact that she and her brother Lazarus were missionaries in exile in southern France and also died there, seems equally negligible.
So all that remains from the interest-driven misinterpretation of the production is another painful experience with our Catholic church: for all the achievements of Judeo-Christian monotheism in architecture, music, painting and poetry, the quick unqualified expression of opinion takes precedence over the careful distinction between the viewer, the viewed and the message.
Instead of remembering Pope Francis’ theology that Christians are meant to go into the world, ecclesiastical critics go into the self-righteous wagon castle of the old church within and the evil world without. –
The fact that one finds oneself in a xenophobic wagon castle with right-wing radicals, who would rather let children and job-seeking fathers drown in the Mediterranean instead of finally organising a sustainable development policy in Africa where leaving home and family is no longer necessary, is particularly painful as a selective silence.
Just like the silence of the shepherds in the face of the twelve-month-long kidnapping, hostage-taking and multiple rapes of the young sisters of Anna, the grandmother of Jesus, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, by terrorists in the Gaza Strip.https://europa-information.eu/en/the-silence-of-the-shepherds/ TH
