Uh, it was ONE cardinal - the papal chamberlain, Biagio Martinelli - who objected to the "wall of nudes" in the Last Judgement. Michelagelo dismissed him as "an interfering halfwit" and said: "here we have the final judgement, and all he [Biagio] is worried about is what we're going to be wearing. Or not wearing." And then painted Martinelli into the fresco as Minos, king of hell, with an ass' ears and a snake swallowing Martinelli's um...snake
There always been back and forth on this in western history since rise of Christianity. Basically competing cultural legacies or influences at times is best way to put it.
I’ll use women as example. Even Romans who were very patriarchal and even some Greeks like Spartans had athletics for women. Separate events but still their own events because even their biggest meat heads and misogynists even understand “athletic women equal athletic baby and healthier at producing and raising kids when young.
The church like it’s Jewish sided influences counterparts or other near eastern religions did not take kindly to women doing any athletics or “unladylike” labor.
Even if men wrestling in nude and flexing their muscles in public to show off or making statues to exaggerate such things, women in sports were often taboo in traditional Christian circles until recently. Their athletics in classical world just involved more acrobatics, flexibility, and skills tied more to stuff they did. Less contact in nature.
The church always been “iffy” or “suspicious” of “homo exotic” undertones or perceived ones the classical pre Christian world had.
I’ll use wrestling for example: Your in nude wrestling men in dirt. The goal is to pin him down and physically dominate them to show your strength and prowess as man because if you can pin and wear someone down like that by grappling you could literally rape them(which I have heard used and likely among Romans themselves to describe domination of another which they did do to men to. But their always had to be “beta/bottom/penetrated” and “alpha/top/penetrator” in relationship.
It’s very individualist and gritty sports that plays up hyper masculinity trends up by a lot. It’s literally dick swinging contest at times. Hell some more “endowed” Romans or Greeks probably did exactly that after winning or dominating opponent in front of large crowd.
You did have sexual events often along athletic ones in Greco Roman world. A lot unfiltered emotions and hormones about.
They even took primitive performance enhancers and drugs for advantage. They actually thought you were not trying hard enough if you did not do whatever it took to win.
For example, stealing in Christianity is sin. Spartans would starve their kids or give them barely enough to survive to force them to steal or scavenge for their own. They got beaten when caught not because they stole because they got caught therefore failed.
The church was probably often off put by “environment” and atmosphere there. Look at European soccer games now. Imagine how rowdy Romans or Greeks got for the Colosseum or olympics.
They likely had their own olympic “village” too full of women to hook up with before or during games,
