View all newsletters
Sign up to our newsletters

Support 110 years of independent journalism.

  1. Politics
13 January 2010

Vatican criticises Avatar

Ecology is not a religion, warns the Holy See

By Sholto Byrnes

James Cameron’s new film, Avatar, may be breaking box-office records, but the Vatican is not impressed — or amused. The Holy See’s newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, has called it “bland” and “facile”, while its radio station claimed that the 3-D spectacular was “a wink towards the pseudo-doctrines which have made ecology the religion of the millennium . . . Nature is no longer a creation to defend, but a divinity to worship.”

The comment comes just days after the Pope publicly criticised world leaders for failing to agree a treaty at the Copenhagen climate summit. “To cultivate peace, one must protect creation,” he said. But he has also warned before against “a new pantheism tinged with neo-paganism, which would see the source of man’s salvation in nature alone, understood in purely naturalistic terms”.

I agree with the Pope that “being green” has gone way beyond a general duty to take reasonable care of our environment. For many, it now has a moral authority that allows them to feel no qualms about aggressively berating others for flying off somewhere warm on holiday, for driving a large car, or for buying non-locally produced fruit, let alone committing an act as heinous as eating shark’s fin soup — never mind that it is a dish whose popularity dates back to the days of the Ming Dynasty (though I’ve always found it pretty tasteless, myself).

Most green fanatics would argue ferociously that they base their views on science and the facts, but the force with which they communicate these views puts their zeal beyond mere reason. It is another example of the void left when religion is removed from society being filled by a certainty just as powerful as any belief in God. As I wrote in the NS nearly two years ago:

Select and enter your email address Your weekly guide to the best writing on ideas, politics, books and culture every Saturday. The best way to sign up for The Saturday Read is via saturdayread.substack.com The New Statesman's quick and essential guide to the news and politics of the day. The best way to sign up for Morning Call is via morningcall.substack.com Our Thursday ideas newsletter, delving into philosophy, criticism, and intellectual history. The best way to sign up for The Salvo is via thesalvo.substack.com Stay up to date with NS events, subscription offers & updates. Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. The best way to sign up for The Green Transition is via spotlightonpolicy.substack.com
  • Administration / Office
  • Arts and Culture
  • Board Member
  • Business / Corporate Services
  • Client / Customer Services
  • Communications
  • Construction, Works, Engineering
  • Education, Curriculum and Teaching
  • Environment, Conservation and NRM
  • Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance
  • Finance Management
  • Health - Medical and Nursing Management
  • HR, Training and Organisational Development
  • Information and Communications Technology
  • Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives
  • Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities
  • Legal Officers and Practitioners
  • Librarians and Library Management
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • OH&S, Risk Management
  • Operations Management
  • Planning, Policy, Strategy
  • Printing, Design, Publishing, Web
  • Projects, Programs and Advisors
  • Property, Assets and Fleet Management
  • Public Relations and Media
  • Purchasing and Procurement
  • Quality Management
  • Science and Technical Research and Development
  • Security and Law Enforcement
  • Service Delivery
  • Sport and Recreation
  • Travel, Accommodation, Tourism
  • Wellbeing, Community / Social Services
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
THANK YOU

How else to explain the new religions that we have created for ourselves? A religion of science, whose priests make proclamations imbued with a certainty that their empirical branch of learning cannot justify; a religion of rights which, however much we may instinctively agree with it, has no more coherent proof than that it is “self-evident”; and now, perhaps, a religion of ecology whose ministers thunder as self-righteously as any 17th-century Puritan preacher.

Not that greenies would ever admit to their views being anything akin to a faith, though, so the Pope’s ideas of pantheism and neo-paganism will not be publicly embraced, even if the accusation is valid. That may be a shame — as most of the pagans, pantheists and animists I’ve come across are considerably more relaxed and less sententious than those greens who give the impression that they won’t be satisfied until all the advances of the past two centuries have been wiped out by environmental doom.

As a recent IPPR report found, that kind of attitude is beginning to backfire quite disastrously with a public fed up with being lectured all the time. Perhaps they should remember the words of G K Chesterton? “It is always the secure who are humble.”

 

Follow the New Statesman team on Twitter

Content from our partners
The promise of prevention
How Labour hopes to make the UK a leader in green energy
Is now the time to rethink health and care for older people? With Age UK

Select and enter your email address Your weekly guide to the best writing on ideas, politics, books and culture every Saturday. The best way to sign up for The Saturday Read is via saturdayread.substack.com The New Statesman's quick and essential guide to the news and politics of the day. The best way to sign up for Morning Call is via morningcall.substack.com Our Thursday ideas newsletter, delving into philosophy, criticism, and intellectual history. The best way to sign up for The Salvo is via thesalvo.substack.com Stay up to date with NS events, subscription offers & updates. Weekly analysis of the shift to a new economy from the New Statesman's Spotlight on Policy team. The best way to sign up for The Green Transition is via spotlightonpolicy.substack.com
  • Administration / Office
  • Arts and Culture
  • Board Member
  • Business / Corporate Services
  • Client / Customer Services
  • Communications
  • Construction, Works, Engineering
  • Education, Curriculum and Teaching
  • Environment, Conservation and NRM
  • Facility / Grounds Management and Maintenance
  • Finance Management
  • Health - Medical and Nursing Management
  • HR, Training and Organisational Development
  • Information and Communications Technology
  • Information Services, Statistics, Records, Archives
  • Infrastructure Management - Transport, Utilities
  • Legal Officers and Practitioners
  • Librarians and Library Management
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • OH&S, Risk Management
  • Operations Management
  • Planning, Policy, Strategy
  • Printing, Design, Publishing, Web
  • Projects, Programs and Advisors
  • Property, Assets and Fleet Management
  • Public Relations and Media
  • Purchasing and Procurement
  • Quality Management
  • Science and Technical Research and Development
  • Security and Law Enforcement
  • Service Delivery
  • Sport and Recreation
  • Travel, Accommodation, Tourism
  • Wellbeing, Community / Social Services
Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.
THANK YOU