The Role of Sports in
the Anti-Christian Conspiracy

"The number of people who only feel pleasure in noise, agitation and 'exciting' sensations is growing. ... Among all peoples and classes today there is a general tendency among everyone to believe that happiness is this…"
Prof. Plinio uttered these words 66 years ago. Since then, the tendency he described has assumed shocking proportions. I have felt this acutely in the past several weeks, as the world has faced a deluge of athletic spectacles in the 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament that have been discussed nonstop on the news, person-to-person, everywhere.

Pulses flutter when one’s chosen star demonstrates that he, like others on his team, can expertly kick a ball around. This is indeed an honorable thing, to know how best to propel a little sphere with one’s hands, feet or head. An intense pride is felt when a champion from one's own country travels by jet to a new playing field abroad and proves that he retains this ability even in other places.

But, for many, their awe transcends borders. That a human being, wherever he be from on the planet, can run around and kick things, is simply breathtaking. The specific ways these balls are hit with arm appendage, leg appendage, or chosen ball-hitting instrument, are blown up and analyzed in slow-motion, usually replayed two or three times, as if they were the notes of a celestial wine one wished to taste forever.

This is because, for an increasing number of people, it is in the development of the body that we find the summit of human potential. They reason that since man is an animal, with an animal body, he ought to be the most efficient animal possible. Special attention is paid to the finest minutiae of anything to do with the body. If something is not perfectly healthy, it is nixed instantly from one’s life. Dietitians and bodybuilders are the new moral theologians.

What is missing here is any idea of the true destiny of man. To become as “jacked” or “ripped” as possible is not the ultimate goal of one’s life. After death, one will not appear before God and be told: “A very fine life you have led, but you could have looked better in the mirror.”

Beyond real necessity (such as to be able to defend himself and others) a man’s attention should not be ceaselessly paid to his physical condition. A father, who is the king of his family, cannot lead his home culturally when the sum total of his knowledge encompasses only the best forms for dumbbell curls and squats.

If he does have other interests, and many do, he is not sufficiently developing them or passing them down to his offspring since most of his free time is spent away at the gym. Instead of trying to improve his time for running a mile, he could be teaching his son to keep time while playing an instrument. But he will not do this, because he craves the endorphins from running, and the overblown “achievement” of a faster record than before. He must prove to himself and to others that his legs can create ever better statistics.

The product of this health obsession is, simply put, empty people. Whether they believe it or not, their very lives manifest the idea that they are nothing more than animals, marvelous bioelectric machines to be kept in perfect running order – and called by God to nothing, nothing at all.

The spiritual dimension of the man is reduced to nothing, and he does not seek a vision of reality in its transcendent aspects. He does not even know he can – and should – do this. His is a cold, dead, rationalist universe, enlivened only with the fake warmth of the flesh. He finds his pleasure in massive feelings that issue from receptors all over his body…

Impurity accompanies the body obsession

It should come as no surprise that impurity goes hand in hand with such living. Prof. Plinio spoke of this already in 1967: “Impurity … diminishes the influence of the spirit in man, making it slow to act, and gives priority to matter. Scripture calls this type of man, animalis homo, an animal-man. He acts more like a beast than a man; he has lost entirely the sense of the things of God. …

“I remember when I was a child, the moral behavior of the better pupils in class was good. The worse ones were those who were impure. They were the ones who remained seated at the end of the class, who ate or drank when the teacher was not watching them, who lacked any interest in the subject being taught. The only time these students became interested was at recess, when soccer would be played. Many of them were good at soccer. They were great at playing with their feet, poor at using their heads…

“These are, unfortunately, the devastations of impurity. This is why when impurity dominates, civilizations go under.”

Indeed, parallel to the moral implosion we have witnessed in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, sports have become enormously popular. Those in the “Big Leagues” have become celebrities, highly paid and adored by everyone. How different from times apast, when the paid, professional athlete was viewed as inferior to the amateur, precisely because the professional made sports his livelihood.

Modern man's obsession over sports – his "fanboying" – is no accident. Like everything we are suffering, it is an engineered problem, directed by the Secret Forces through well-placed agents. The testimonies of Dr. Lawrence Dunegan in The New Order of Barbarians are quite telling. Attending a medical conference hosted by a member of these Secret Societies, Dr. Dunegan heard in great detail how athletics were to be a “tool of social change.” (Randy Engel, The New Order of Barbarians, p. 53).

The public was to be manipulated such that they would constantly be exercising, “running all over the place,” and especially in immodest clothing that would conveniently arrive on the market. (Ibid., p. 32) Why else except to overemphasize the body and encourage impurity?

Girls were considered priority targets, he notes: “Very important in sports was sports for girls. Athletics would be pushed for girls … to change the role model of what young girls should look to be. While she’s growing up she should look to be an athlete rather [than] look forward to being a mother.” (Ibid., p. 5)

There was an additional objective with a broader scope than this intended rift in the families. Soccer would be promoted everywhere to “de-emphasize” nationalism in countries which theretofore had played and favored their own favorite sports. (Ibid., p. 53) Soccer fans count in the hundreds of millions now, if not billions. For many countries it has effectively supplanted their more defining regional games.

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Despite the horrors I have described, one actually can come to better understand truth and virtue through the playing of sports. There is a martial character underpinning many sports that allows boys to engage in a healthy competition. It would be instructive to analyze how the medievals played certain games – such as wrestling or fencing, which is discussed in this article – as this was the period when things were generally the most ordered. We can see some Catholics legitimately attracted to these sports.

However, I believe the Catholic should not adhere to the general obsession regarding today's professional sports games, and avoid them. He should not care whether Haaland, Messi or any of these other fake elites has improved in the art of moving ball across turf.

I am also of the opinion that a Catholic should try to cultivate those games local to him, to which he has a connection – perhaps a man watches his son playing football here, or a group of adult friends plays a casual match of basketball there. In these settings, there is none of the stupid, drunken cheering on of televised ball games. And, hopefully, the body is not overemphasized.

To be continued