A Reflection on the Blasphemy in Paris

Twenty years ago, as rector of Sydney University’s St John’s College, I interviewed a young woman for admission. In those days it was still acceptable for a Catholic educational body to expect in its students a certain sympathy, at least, for the Christian faith, so I asked her about her views on religion. They weren’t exactly positive: she told me that she thought religion was the opium of the people (yes I know, it wasn’t original, but she was only 18) and she came pretty close to saying that she thought that the clergy should be hanged from lamp posts. ‘Why then,’ I asked her, ‘would you expect me to offer you a place in a Catholic college?’ ‘Oh,’ she bounced back shamelessly, only mildly embarrassed, ‘is this a Catholic college then? I hadn’t picked up on that!’

My would-be student (I did in fact offer her a place) was in fact a very pleasant young woman who taught me a very useful lesson: the gulf between believers and unbelievers has yawned beyond anything we had previously imagined.

Perhaps we Christians are over-sensitive, but that’s hardly surprising: the Fatherhood of God is the most important thing in the world to us, for he is our Origin and our End. In the western world, at least, such a view of the reality of existence has been widely discarded by older generations and – what is far sadder – is now virtually unknown to most of the young. They are blind to Great Matters that to us are blindingly obvious. Their lives look utterly meaningless to us – and so do ours to them, and absurd too: St Paul foresaw that clearly when he wrote that if Christ never rose ‘we of all men are the most pitiable’.

I have looked at the video of the Olympics parody that so offended Christians. I don’t doubt that it was deliberate. A woman by the name of Barbara Butch (not her birth name, one suspects) played the principal role, and claimed later in an Instagram post that a parody of the Last Supper or at least on da Vinci’s interpretation of it was specifically intended. The post was almost immediately pulled, presumably at the instigation of the IOC. Subsequent attempts by the IOC at damage control were laughably unconvincing. Clearly there was a degree of mischief if not actual malice behind the scenes and the actors must have been fully aware of parallels with the Last Supper, but I still question whether insulting Christians was the primary motive, or if that parallelism even occurred to the vast majority of its spectators.

Am I being naive? Perhaps so, but contemporary ignorance about beliefs that were once almost common to humanity is often astonishingly profound.

The chasm between believers and insouciant unbelievers is now so wide that effective communication is impaired. We think we understand each other but haven’t got a clue. Every year when we in Tasmania see MONA’s three illuminated crosses at the Dark Mofo we can’t help but take them to be an intended mockery of our Faith. But the devastating truth is that words and actions that can deeply hurt us may now mean little or nothing to many of our fellow citizens, and that they simply cannot imagine why we so readily take offence.

Rather than be outraged, let’s try harder to give them the benefit of the doubt. Blasphemy can certainly be a quite deliberate act of hatred for God arising from a bitter and angry soul. In modern parlance it can be ‘hate speech’. Or it can be merely an unthinking, insensitive sneer from someone who knows no better.

On balance I’m glad that we no longer have laws against blasphemy, because the Law is such a blunt instrument that it cannot readily discern the secrets of the heart. I think it’s true that if any aspect of Islam had been parodied, even accidentally, a fatwa could follow and those responsible might have paid dearly for their insolence. Christians should be glad that, by and large, we can take such things on the chin.

Nowadays everybody gets offended by something. Being offended has become a western middle-class pastime – and a big money-earner too because when ‘offence’ is mentioned, ‘compensation’ never seems to lag far behind. For Heaven’s sake let’s not allow ourselves be identified with that mentality. Let’s move on and tell people the Good News, rather than carp at them for not having heard it already.