Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

6.30: (Vigil) O'Donnell family members, (RIP).
11.00 John, Patrick & Winifred O'Connor, (Anniv).
6.30: Pierce Murray, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

A political dimension has always been intrinsic to the Olympic Games. The host country has always sought to wrap itself in the 'impartial' Olympic flag, loudly proclaiming 'innocence by association'. China has engaged in this exercise more shamelessly than most. They have used the Olympics to distract the rest of the world from the barbarity of their irredeemable political system.

Many human rights activists had hoped that China's craving for international acceptance would prompt the authorities to ease up on their repression. This optimism was not totally without foundation. In 2001, Beijing Olympics officials promised (at the behest of the Communist leaders) that the games would be "an opportunity to foster democracy, improve human rights, and integrate China with the rest of the world."

Ironically, the opposite happened. The harassment of human rights activists actually intensified. The authorities insisted that the party would not be spoiled by difficult 'pests'. Take little Qianci, who should be awarded a Gold Medal (!) as the youngest political prisoner in the world. The 9-month-old girl and her 24-year-old mother are surrounded day and night by two dozen policemen. They have been prisoners in their Beijing apartment since December last. Visitors are brusquely turned away by police. Connections to the outside world are cut.

The young mother and daughter hardly seem like a major threat to the state. Their offense? Qianci and Zeng Jinyan are daughter and wife of Hu Jia, a leading activist on behalf of dissidents, human-rights lawyers, and abused farmers. He was dragged from his home by police and charged with "inciting subversion of state power." His real crime was to make Beijing lose face by reporting human-rights abuses.

We should not be surprised when Beijing's critics draw comparisons to the 1936 Olympics, when the Nazis used the athletic event to sanitise a murder machine. Like China today, Germany craved international respectability. The Olympic Council provided the fig leaf.

Many human rights activists believed that all this attention would shame the authorities into reversing their terrible track record on human rights. The Olympic Games, whose slogan is "One World, One Dream," would provide the leverage for liberalisation. Many dissidents believed that the authorities would not dare to move against them while the world looked on. They were wrong. A spate of recent arrests have been met with near silence from foreign countries. Ironically, we dispatched our most garrulous minister to Beijing to be silent on our behalf.

There is a world of difference between a back bone and a hard neck. The former will be displayed wonderfully by the athletes there, the latter more wonderfully still by the western politicians present. Martin Cullen is in good company!

-Dick Lyng

The Olympics & Religion

Today's Olympic Games are based on what took place at Olympia, in Greece, nearly three millennia ago. Despite all the idealistic rubbish that surrounds their origins, the Games began primarily as an attractive means of getting men fit for war. A secondary factor was the Greek belief that the gods smiled on winners. So by establishing a competition aimed at producing supreme winners, the Greeks were acknowledging the divinity of the supreme god, Zeus.

So religion was central to the Olympics. Zeus looked down on competitors, favouring some and denying victory to others. The poet Pindar, on one of his victoryodes, addressed Zeus as follows: 'You could spur on a man with natural talent to strive towards great glory with the help of the gods'. Moreover, if an athlete was found guilty of cheating or bribery (Plus ça change...!), the resulting fine was used to make a cult statue of Zeus.

A grand sacrifice of 100 oxen was usually made to Zeus during the course of the Games, and Zeus was invoked under the title 'averter of flies', to keep the sacrificial meat fly-free! (How does he handle smog, I wonder!)

Olympia was home to one of Greece's great oracles, an oracle to Zeus, with an altar to him consisting of the bonfireheap created by burnt sacrificial offerings. As the offerings were burnt, they were examined by a priest, who pronounced an oracle - an often ambiguous prediction about the future - according to his interpretation of what he saw. Athletes flocked to the priest to learn what their chances in the Games were.

The Greeks tried to keep politics and sport apart, but their efforts met then, as such efforts do now, with limited success. The Olympic truce was meant to lead to a cessation of hostilities throughout Greece. This allowed competitors to travel and participate safely, but it was not always observed. The historian, Thucydides, tells how in 420 BC the Spartans violated the truce by attacking a fort and dispatching lightarmed troops while the games were in progress. Consequently, they were banned from the Games next time out. But Lichas, a prominent Spartan, thought of a way round the ban - he entered the chariot race as a Boeotian. When his true nationality was discovered, however, he was given a public flogging at Olympia.

A victorious athlete brought great honour to his home city. The sixth-century Athenian statesman Solon promoted athletics by rewarding victors financially. A Gold Medal winner would receive 500 drachmae (he could buy 500 sheep with this sum). The historian Thucydides records that the maverick Athenian leader Alcibiades tried to drum up political support in 415 BC by boasting of his earlier successes in the Olympic Games (an ancient version of our own George Hook!).

And it is clear from the victory poetry of Pindar that the Sicilian tyrants in the fifth century aimed to strengthen their grip on affairs by competing in the equestrian events at the Games, and by commissioning famous poets to compose and publicly perform odes celebrating their victories.-D.L.

Lest We Forget...

The Vatican listed these Chinese bishops and priests arrested and sentenced to forced labour in recent times:

  1. Mgr James Su Zhimin, 72, was arrested in 1996. He was never seen again.
  2. Mgr Francis An Shuxin (auxiliary bishop of the diocese of Baoding, Hebei), 54, was arrested in 1997. No one has heard from him since.
  3. Mgr Han Dingxian), 66, was arrested in December 1999. He previously spent a total of 20 years in prison. Since his detention he has been in isolation, unable to see anyone, whether a parishioner or a relative.
  4. Mgr Cosma Shi Enxiang, 83, was arrested on April 13, 2001. Mgr Shi was ordained bishop in 1982. Previously he had spent 30 years in prison. The last time he was arrested was in December 1990. He was later released in 1993. Thereafter he was under forced isolation.
  5. Mgr Philip Zhao Zhendong, 84, was arrested in late December 2004.
  6. Fr Paul Huo Junlong, about 50, was ordained in 1987. Arrested in August 2004, he has been detained in an unknown location without trial or charges brought against him.

Olympian Foot in Mouth...

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