I lost interest in the Olympics in 1988, the year after I graduated college, when the Olympic committee abandoned all pretense of amateur athletics. Last year, blissfully ignorant as I was, I had to be told after the fact that the Los Angeles Dodgers thumbed their nose at God, and, a mere fourteen months later, the Paris Olympics doubled down on a colossal production of public blasphemy.
In the wake of the Dodger desecration, I encouraged Catholics to quit paying for the mockery of morality. In other words, stop attending, stop watching on TV, stop reading about, and stop talking about Major League Baseball. Start following your local Catholic high school on the diamond and the gridiron.
I get almost nowhere with these arguments. So, I wasn’t expecting much by urging my fellow Catholics to shut off the Olympics and avoid the sponsors, but you know, hope over experience and all that. I am surely expecting less with the following fantastical suggestion for the International Olympic Committee: make amends for the blasphemy of Paris by honoring and celebrating the undeniable and inescapable Catholic origins of Milan (Winter Olympics 2026) and Los Angeles (Summer Games 2028). The good news is that my consulting fee is way less than the overpriced Bud Light in the bleachers at America’s ballparks.
For Milan, I have a few thoughts, but let’s go with this: a living diorama of St. Ambrose baptizing St. Augustine. I’m not sure exactly how to work the greatest work of history, Augustine’s City of God, into the opening ceremonies, but, hey, let’s form a focus group.
Now, Los Angeles: the city’s name is an abbreviated form of El Río de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula. (Yes, readers from afar, Los Angeles does have a river. It’s not the Siene, but even Mayor Bass is smart enough not to take a dip in it.) We call Los Angeles the city of angels, but it’s actually the city of Our Lady Queen of Angels. What? The patroness of Los Angeles is the Blessed Virgin Mary? Yes.
So, let’s open the 2028 Summer Games with a Salve Regina and a Litany to the Blessed Virgin. Next let’s reenact Franciscan Friar Juan Crispí’s naming of the river and his confrere Junipero Serra’s founding of the St. Gabriel Mission. I know Serra fell out of favor in the wake of a pestilence that caused mobs to tear down statues of, well, pretty much anyone, but the diminutive priest from Mallorca actually was a gentle fellow who loved the natives of California and did his best to baptize them. You can read about his good efforts here. Or you can just look at a map of California and acknowledge that the Interstates 5 and 15 are the Camino Real and that every great California city began as a Spanish Mission—the purpose of which was to protect the property of the natives and, above all, bring them to union with their Creator.
Sound good? I’ll wait by the phone.