It was meant to show off the glory of France. Alas, the opening spectacle of the Paris Olympics delivered a farce, in which no one, critics or defenders, came off well.

The bone of contention had to do with a portion of the whole event: a tableau featuring those mandatory bonnes vivantes, an assortment of drag queens, pouting around a dining table, presided by a plus-sized LGBT+ activist and disk jockey, Barbara Butch, complete with a halo of light.

Around the world, many viewers, steam coming out of their ears, thought they saw a parody of the Last Supper, Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of Christianity’s most sacred memory.

The indignation rose to the heavens. The French bishops and our own archbishop, Charles Scicluna, lodged formal protests. Other Christian denominations, political conservatives and news networks had their say in the media.

One problem: the tableau was alluding to a 1635 painting, Feast of the Gods, by the Dutch artist Jan van Bijlert, whose subject was the gods of Olympus.

Feast of the Gods by Dutch artist Jan van Bijlert. Photo: Wikimedia

Barbara Butch, it turns out, had been given the part of Apollo, the sun god, hence the halo. That strange contraption on the table before her was a DJ kit, a coy 21st-century update on Apollo’s harp.

We should expect little from American conservatives and Marine Le Pen. They will politicise anything for political advantage in open season. But the bishops? What excuse could they have, these men whose study of Scripture and the early Church should have immersed them in the worlds of Ancient Greece and Rome?

Even without a second look at the tableau, they should have known something was up. You didn’t need expert knowledge of 17th-century Dutch painting.

A simple head count would have shown that the figures at the table numbered rather more than the 12 apostles. The huge, unmissable, near-naked figure of Dionysius, amid a bacchanalian setting, was a clue that the Last Supper wasn’t the point of reference.

The artistic director, Thomas Jolly, explained his intention was to bring together allusions to Mount Olympus, French wine and gastronomy as well as a picture of “inclusion”. For good measure, in Greek mythology, Dionysius was said to be the father of Sequana, the goddess associated with the Seine.

However, if the protestors slipped up, so did many who rushed to defend the tableau. Barbara Butch declared defiantly that it represented a new New Testament – until someone pointed out the Bijlert connection.

In fact, it’s striking how, early on in the controversy, the tableau was defended on the assumption that it was indeed a parody of the Last Supper. But, had it been a parody of Christianity’s central sacrament, the tableau would have been indefensible.

Free speech is a freedom that belongs to individuals, not to states- Ranier Fsadni

Some defenders said it should transcend criticism because it was art. Actually, it was kitsch but that’s irrelevant. Art isn’t juvenile transgression. If you take art seriously, it shouldn’t get a free pass.

Others said it was protected free speech because, after all, France is the country of Voltaire, where blasphemy isn’t against the law. But this misses an important dimension of free speech: it’s ordinary people’s speech that’s protected. The tableau was “speech” by the French state.

If a non-state event parodies the Last Supper, it should certainly be protected speech, even if the entire Christian world takes offence. But if a state selects a religion for parody (especially if it’s the religion of a segment of its citizens), it is not exercising free speech. It’s practising discrimination and, possibly, intimidation. Free speech is a freedom that belongs to individuals, not to states.

Nor would the state have been practising secularism, as some said, since secularism is the separation of Church and state, while such a parody involves a state intruding into religious affairs.

The only valid defence of the tableau was the official one given: the critics were factually mistaken. The evidence is conclusive. In this respect, the tableau is beyond criticism.

But the defenders are not. They supplemented the critics’ farce with their own. They rushed to defend French and European values while displaying ignorance of the very foundation of the values of tolerance, free speech and secularism.

It is dangerous ignorance. If you don’t realise how sinister it is for a state to select a religion for parody or ridicule, you are ill-prepared to defend liberal values against creeping authoritarianism.

One final takeaway. There’s a good reason why many people, on both sides, were quick to go along with the idea that the tableau was based on Leonardo’s Last Supper: Bijlert drew inspiration from that work.

But there’s a deeper, longer connection that goes to the core of Europe’s identity. Christ’s last supper, as portrayed in the Gospel, was a reinterpretation of the Jewish Passover meal; the latter, in turn, was an adaptation of the Greek banquet known as the symposium. Each of those institutions deploys the symbolism of the meal, and its conviviality, to celebrate its particular idea of liberty and solidarity.

Europe cannot celebrate its cultural heritage, nor defend its traditions of freedom, if it neglects, or scoffs at, any single pillar of its heritage, Christianity included. Just as many bishops and conservatives need to become better steeped in the Classics, non-Christian Europe needs to become better read in how strongly Christianity has shaped the foundations of our secularism.