I just read an Associated Press article written by Alessandra Rizzo. It was comical and in my opinion partially true at the same time. Here’s the first paragraph of the article:
The Vatican newspaper and radio station have called the film “Avatar” simplistic, and criticized it for flirting with modern doctrines that promote the worship of nature as a substitute for religion.
Okay, first of all I agree it is simplistic. I saw the movie and like most people I was impressed with it graphically but it wasn’t a great movie. It was good but not great. It was by no means original. One friend of mine compared it to Dances With Wolves only in space. Okay so much for me agreeing with the Vatican. Apparently the Vatican now sees a threat in a movie that promotes the fictitious worship of a fictitious tree by a fictitious people on a fictitious planet. I find it ironic that a group who believes the story that God’s only son was born of a virgin, died, came back to life three days later and erased all of our sins, takes issue with this movie.
…the film “gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature.” Similarly, Vatican Radio said it “cleverly winks at all those pseudo-doctrines that turn ecology into the religion of the millennium.”
If there were an award for clever winking it would go to the Vatican. You know things like sexual abuse scandals, acts of omission and commission during World War II and the early Catholic involvement in Rwanda; in particular the church’s support for the former president. Of course these are just the tip of the iceberg.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said that while the movie reviews are just that — film criticism, with no theological weight — they do reflect Pope Benedict XVI’s views on the dangers of turning nature into a “new divinity.”
I found this paragraph to be particularly funny. They’re concerned about a “new divinity”. Sounds like they’re scared of competition.
There is not a whole lot more to say about this article. It had all the silly, superstitious, medieval thinking you can expect to find from the Catholic Church.
They did have one thing right, the movie was simplistic.