VATICAN BLASTS AVATAR

Vatican City (AP) -- 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.

L'Osservatore Romano said 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. Nature is no longer a creation to defend, but a divinity
to worship," the radio said.

In a recent World Day of Peace message, the pontiff warned
against any notions that equate human person and other living
things. He said such notions "open the way to a new pantheism
tinged with neo-paganism, which would see the source of man's
salvation in nature alone."

The Vatican newspaper occasionally likes to comment in its
cultural pages on movies or pop culture icons, as it did
recently about "The Simpsons" or U2. In one famous instance,
several Vatican officials spoke out against "The Da Vinci
Code."

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