I’m not a big fan of the Olympics and I missed the widely acclaimed opening of this year’s Games. While some of the events themselves are fun to watch, the attendant nationalistic pride and cookie cutter media stories of new Olympian heroes are as tedious as they are predictable. Father Raymond J. De Souza shared his thoughts on the Olympics in an op-ed column in the (Canadian) National Post. My favorite lines:

“Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind,” states the first “fundamental principle of Olympism” in the Olympic Charter. I am not sure what that means, if anything, but most philosophies of life do not come with exclusive sponsorship agreements or mandatory drug-testing.