the Guardian of the Temple” disturbed the Christians
It is the Toulouse company La machine, directed by François Delarozière, which is behind this free show (but worth 4.7 million euros supported by Toulouse Métropole) which invaded the streets of the Pink City for three days. With the help of immense and complex machines, three large characters (a minotaur, a spider and a scorpion) came to life, mixing mythological references and esoteric stories.
It is in fact the second opus, entitled “The Guardian of the Temple” of an urban opera whose first part had already been given in the city for four days, in November 2018. 900,000 spectators then gathered at the ‘era. A few days ago, once again nearly a million people came to admire the inventiveness of these colossi who slowly evolve in the avenues of the city center.
An impressive spectacle which caused controversy beforehand
At the beginning of July 2024, the company La machine unveiled on X (formerly Twitter), the trailer for this new opus. The work was presented, in particular, by a poster with Gothic and medieval accents dotted with flames, between horned beasts and mythological figures, such as the Minotaur or Lilith, a half-scorpion, half-woman demon.
A poster that caused a reaction. Notably Simon d’Artigue, priest of Saint-Étienne Cathedral in Toulouse. A good communicator, from the morning of July 10, 2024, the priest reacted on Before adding to the press: “The tarot cards, the beast with its horns, several elements take up the satanic imagination and that disturbs me as a Catholic priest. You shouldn’t play too much with these symbols,” he told the Actu.fr website. He does not hesitate to see it as a “fight against the Church”.
Many Internet users took up the abbot’s tweet to express their concerns, too, during the summer, by toughening up their comments. “Evil is less and less hidden,” for some. The others speaking of “Satanist propaganda which does not speak its name openly”.
Words and deeds
The Catholic authorities quickly took over. Mgr Guy de Kerimel, the Archbishop of Toulouse, declared in mid-October in Aleteia that he had taken up the subject by speaking with the municipality and the company of La machine. A way to try to understand the process, but above all to express one’s astonishment at the tone of the show. Faced with controversies, the artistic director of the company La machine, François Delarozière, stressed that his opera “truly tells a story which speaks of love, death, life, the afterlife, with the great myths which have crossed centuries. Arguments which did not convince the bishop, who was more concerned by the dismal and distressing nature of the machines. “All this is not very encouraging. There are people who enjoy watching horror films, but note that you have to pay to access them. There, we just have to hole up at home if we don’t want to witness all this, for three days,” noted the bishop, ten days before the show.
Faced with the uneasiness that this type of cultural activity playing with dark and infernal themes can cause, the prelate tried to bring a more positive note to “look to the future with confidence”. The consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus of his diocese was the occasion, this October 16, 2024, anticipating in a certain way the recent encyclical of Pope Francis on the subject. “There is no other victory over evil and death than love, mercy. I believe that from this heart comes a deep serenity, and we need serenity, not a door to darkness!”, further justified Mgr de Kerimel. Thus refusing simplistic confrontation, he invites his followers not to seek to “triumph by shouting louder than the others”.
The fact remains that the bishop sees in this spectacle, just like that of the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the same message which “tends to encourage the satisfaction of passions, by appealing to Greek mythology”. Pagan references which ultimately do not carry human values, according to the prelate.
These occasions which play into the hands of radical discourses
The intervention of the Toulouse bishop and his spiritual approach to allow everyone to remain in an attitude close to that of Christ did not put an end to the controversies that social networks facilitate. Traditionalist Catholic circles, for example, took advantage of these events to express their difference in tone and approach. For example, shortly after the company’s poster was unveiled, Pro-Europa Christiana, a European federation that defends the social order of the Church, referred to a “satanic parade” in an online petition. She went so far as to encourage Internet users to write messages of indignation to the Toulouse city councilor (ex-LR) Jean-Luc Moudenc, thus denouncing “a glorification of the devil”. Others, from conservative circles in Toulouse, have distributed leaflets at school exits in recent weeks to denounce a spectacle inciting “hatred, evil, immorality”.
Always in search of media relays, certain Catholic YouTubers have also taken advantage of the turmoil to express their more or less nuanced opinions. Dominican Brother Paul-Adrien, with his 405,000 subscribers on YouTube, spoke of a “decline of secularism”. He, like others, also complains about the direct link between this show and the sulphurous metal music festival “Hellfest”, where the mechanical monster Lilith had already been presented. A week before the start of the show, he tries to identify the difficulty of pastorally supporting these alternative cultures.
The opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris demonstrated this in its own way. Where some see cultural expressions assuming creative freedom, others decipher the signs of a worrying loss of bearings. Aesthetic and moral reading repel each other with poorly nuanced ideological arguments. Father Bertrand Monnier, from the diocese of Verdun, who works on young people attending “Hellfest” and listening to metal music, already spoke in an interview of the existence of a “nocturnal imagination” in reaction to the “candy pink world of the 1960s and 1970s. A culture that would reject a stifling model with a phenomenon of provocative catharsis. Without forgetting, he points out that the outraged indignation of certain believers is the desired goal of certain event organizers. “It’s a great piece of free and effective advertising. “Hellfest”, for example, clearly rode this wave when it was launched,” he concluded.