The Catholic Church should stick to turning the other cheek rather than stirring the toxic Olympic stew

Though not specifically aimed at Catholicism, during Madonna’s Blond Ambition tour she simulated masturbation whilst performing “Like a Virgin” with a pair of male dancers wearing conical bras. That drew a warning from Toronto Police, who threatened to have her charged with public indecency, should she pull that diddling act on stage when she strutted through the city in her missile-coned Jean-Paul Gaultier corset circa 1990. Naturally, she went ahead anyway.

Most directly, the singer incited Catholic ire by donning a crown of thorns and strapping herself to a giant glittering cross — her Confessions world tour — in crass imitation of the Crucifixion, signifying who knows what?

But the Material Girl is hardly alone in affronting the Catholic Church. In “The Last Temptation of Christ,” director Martin Scorsese had Willem Dafoe as Jesus imagining an alternate life, wherein he had hot sex with the prostitute Mary Magdalene. In “The Exorcist,” the possessed Regan character masturbates with a crucifix.

Then there’s “Piss Christ,” a notorious piece of “artwork” that’s made the touring rounds of major museums — a photo of a crucifix immersed in a jar of urine.

Pot shots and potty vulgarity.

Call it art or call it obscene sacrilege, the Vatican has generally rolled with the punches, leaving the outrage to professional Catholics and Christians, anti-defamation leagues and right-wing politicians who’ve been in an utter dither over the controversial Paris Olympics opening ceremony last Friday.

It was only belatedly, and likely after concluding it had to say something, that the Vatican on the weekend issued a statement about the drag-queen parody of “The Last Supper.”

“The Holy See has been saddened by certain scenes during opening ceremony of the Paris Olympic Games,” the statement reads, “and can only join the voices that have been raised in recent days in deploring the offence caused to many Christians and followers of other religions.”

That’s hardly fire and brimstone condemnation.

“In a prestigious event where the whole world comes together around common values, there should be no allusions that ridicule the religious beliefs of many people.” Adding that freedom of expression “is limited by respect for others.”

As a Catholic, and though not scandalized by such an obvious mockery of one of the holiest scriptures in the New Testament — Matthew 26:17, the first Eucharist of communion with Christ and his apostles — I certainly found it way over the top. In keeping, however, with the broad lampooning burlesque theme of the extravaganza.

Even those who’ve never cracked open a Bible would have recognized the scene as depicted in Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, “The Last Supper.”

In this kitsch tableau, French DJ Barbara Butch was got up in a silver halo headdress, seated at the centre of a long table, obviously Jesus-like, surrounded by quasi-disciples in drag, including a man in blue paint apparently meant to be Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and ecstasy.

All of it got up a lot of noses, sparking a social media tsunami, most of it aimed at Thomas Jolly, the gay creative director of the opening ceremony extravaganza. Jolly told a French TV news program: “In France, we are allowed to love how we want and who we want, we are allowed to believe — or not believe. We have a lot of rights, and the idea here was to showcase these values.”

Certainly diversity — somebody please strike that word from the modern lexicon, for triteness — had never before been so central a motif at an Olympics launch, nor the LGBTQ element so prominent. And bully for that, I suppose — the theme held throughout, making for tremendous entertainment. It’s the excess of it, and the hyper-sexualization of the spectacle, which triggered a hell-storm, still rolling thunder more than a week later.

The show, the media says here, was a tour de force of culture and camp. But that mutated version of “The Last Supper” is difficult to justify, although Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo gave it a shot, on Friday proclaiming her “unwavering support” for Jolly and art as expression. President Emmanuel Macron extolled the genius pageantry of the show.

For his part, Jolly continues to maintain that “The Last Supper” was not his inspiration for that part of the panorama along the River Seine, as athletes floated by in a water-borne parade of nations. He insists it was a satiric tableau that depicted a pagan festival featuring the gods of Olympus.

Right. Pull the other one. This played out exactly as intended, avant-garde to the nth degree and poke-you-in-the-eye taunting.

Jolly and Butch have both received death threats over the past week, which police are taking seriously, after Jolly filed a formal complaint, alleging “public insults,” “threatening messages” and “defamation.” Paris prosecutor’s office said they’ve opened a hate speech investigation into social network harassment of Jolly about his “sexual orientation and wrongly-assumed Israeli origins.”

Sure, throw Israel into the toxic stew.

You know, there is plenty of religious persecution out there, across the spectrum of faiths. A hell of a lot of it blows in from the religious and conservative right and as Christian nationalism.

In a world where sinners outnumber saints, the Catholic Church would do best by sticking with its tried-and-true doctrine of turning the other cheek.