The mockery of Christian values at the Olympic Games in Paris signals that much of European civilization is at a cultural crossroads, while aggressive regimes are purposeful and ideologically motivated. Paradoxically, it is becoming the norm in Europe to prohibit criticism of anything other than one’s own civilizational values, although not everyone realizes the threats this poses to Western democracies.
All prominent European thinkers and scholars have noted the decisive influence of Christianity on the formation and content of European civilization. Like it or not, one of the core features of world civilizations – Western, Arab-Muslim, Indian, and Chinese – is primarily religion. Every great and successful civilization had its own religion.
This does not imply religious fanaticism or killing for the sake of religion, but rather a value orientation that sets the social rules of the game. Science knows of no cases of the emergence and development of any civilization without religion, or, more specifically, of the educational and integrating influence of religion on society. Even well-known atheists such as Richard Dawkins, who calls himself a cultural Christian because he admires the ceremonial and philanthropic aspects of Christianity, recognize the crucial role of religion.
The recent scandalous performance at the Olympic Games in Paris, which parodied Jesus and the “Last Supper,” showed that Europe is not above officially mocking its cultural foundations, Christianity. At least, this is how representatives of other civilizations see it: Islamic, Chinese, and Indian. While in other civilizations their cultural values are protected by law, even to the point of repression, the European organizers of the Olympic Games decided to make a parody of Christianity with images of sexual minorities. The participants of the performance said that in this way they wanted to “unite people” and at the same time stated that “art always divides.”
Catholic Bishop Robert Barron urged Catholics not to hesitate to resist blasphemy and condemned pseudo-tolerance: “…everyone is tolerated, all this diversity is wonderful – until it comes to anyone who disagrees with your ideology, like these 2.6 billion people. So stop this talk of tolerance and diversity,” he said. “I wonder what planet they live on if they think that harmony, peace, etc. has been achieved by this clear insult to Christians.
British journalist Douglas Murray notes that a decade and a half ago, atheists in Europe could freely criticize religion, but after the attacks by Muslim fanatics on critics of Islam, no one dares to say anything bad about Islam in Europe. Only Christianity can be criticized without consequences – Christians will not cut off your head or blow you up with explosives, unlike other representatives of “cultural diversity.” Many conservatives also point out that, under the fear of Islamist attacks, scholars criticizing religion are less and less often invited to TV studios, unless they criticize only Christianity.
While in the West, ultra-liberals are busy ridiculing their traditional European culture and trying to replace it with something new that is laughed at and scorned by non-Western cultures, the world is becoming an increasingly dangerous place for democracies. China is absorbed in world leadership based on a mixture of communism and cultural greatness, India, under the leadership of Narendra Modi, is experiencing a wave of surprisingly intolerant nationalism, Erethia is mired in a web of aggressive scrambles and threatens Western countries with nuclear bombing, and Islamic countries are entering a period of militant expansion of faith, which is the civilizational equivalent of the Crusades. And only Europe, instead of civilizational mobilization against anti-democratic forces, is busy destroying and ridiculing its own integrative cultural foundations that could unite the countries of the continent in a war that the West is in no hurry to notice is beginning.
Author: Valeriy Maydanyuk