St. Anthony Messenger: Replacing Moral Outrage with Curiosity and Wonder

At the start of the 2024 summer Olympics, Pope Francis called upon the world to honor the “spirit of fraternity” that the games were founded upon and for warring nations to follow antiquity’s tradition of adopting a truce.  If only “culture wars” were included in this truce as well.

Was it the festival of Dionysus being portrayed in the opening ceremony, as its artistic director would explain, or was it a mockery of the Last Supper? I don’t know. What’s the story behind Algerian boxer Imane Khelif and her disqualification from last year’s world championships because she allegedly failed “gender eligibility testing”?

I don’t know. But the International Olympic Committee criticized the Russian-dominated International Boxing Committee’s decision to ban Khelif, born a biological female, as “impossibly flawed.”

Those three words—“I don’t know”—are precisely the point. Both situations proved to be nuanced, complex, yet were attacked with such moral certainty by an online mob that the Vatican itself felt the need to respond days later with a vague statement that they were “saddened” by “certain scenes” during the opening ceremony. Elon Musk and J.K. Rowling were listed in a cyberbullying lawsuit by Khelif. Good for Khelif. She returned home with a gold medal. Musk and Rowling got retweets.

The whole world came together at the Olympics, united by the virtues of sport, but we just couldn’t help ourselves...

Read the remainder of my October editorial in the St. Anthony Messenger here.