Disney has been singled out as a primary promoter of the consumerist corruption of contemporary culture.

That’s the judgment of Benedictine Father Christopher Jamison, the abbot of England’s Worth Abbey.

Father Jamison, who earned national fame in Britain in the hit BBC series “The Monastery,” says in a guide he has published about how people can find authentic happiness that corporations like Disney are persuading children to subscribe to their vision of a consumerist utopia instead of traditional religion.

The Benedictine abbot accuses Disney of marketing Disneyland as a modern-day pilgrimage site, the Daily Telegraph reported Nov. 29.

And even when some Disney movies seem to have good moral messages, Father Jamison said Disney’s motive is merely to make more money through merchandising rather than promoting virtue.

“The message behind every movie and book, behind every theme park and T-shirt is that our children’s world needs Disney,” he said. “So they absolutely must go to see the next Disney movie, which we’ll also want to give them on DVD as a birthday present.

“They will be happier if they live the full Disney experience; and thousands of families around the world buy into this deeper message as they flock to Disneyland.”

Said Father Jamison, “Where once morality and meaning were available as part of our free cultural inheritance, now corporations sell them to us as products.”

The abbot said Disney and similar corporations now “inhabit our imagination.”

“Once planted there they can make us endlessly greedy,” he warned. “And that is exactly what they are doing.”

— Tom McFeely