The BBC has plunged to new depths of indecent mawkishness in its coverage of the disaster in the Indian Ocean. Every news bulletin offers a running count of corpses and one day last week they asked the question:, "Is this the biggest world disaster ever?" - as if the whole bloody catastrophe were only a variation on the Eurovision Song Contest.

Don't take my word for it. The Indian Times carried a furious article covering its entire front page: CAN THE BBC GET AWAY WITH THIS CORPSE SHOW? The editor said that following the 9/11 attacks on the twin towers, the BBC had shown commendable restraint in not broadcasting pictures of the dead. But ever since the Boxing Day catastrophe they have paraded images of line upon line of corpses, including children.

This is abominable and the BBC has made me ashamed to be British. How dare they offer us 24 hours every day this spectacle of disaster as entertainment? I have spent the last 30 years in and out of various BBC studios, making minor programmes and doing the occasional interview, and I know how their minds work. They would have been frustrated and bored as hell between Christmas and the New Year - a period when, Parliament not sitting and most people on holiday, there is not much going on - twiddling their thumbs and producing those tedious and trivial Forgettable Events of the Year shows. How pleased they must have been when the tsunami struck - for it gave them something to fill their schedules.

Please, before you reach for the green ink and write to Hear All Sides, don't accuse me of cynicism. The cynicism belongs to the BBC and the proof of their cynicism is in the pictures of dead bodies served up for our prurient attention.

And, of course, they would not know that actually the Indian Ocean tsunami did not produce the world's worst ever natural disaster. There have been earthquakes in China which killed many more. Then there was the small matter of the Black Death which killed off half the world's population in the 14th century. Or the great influenza epidemic of 1919 in which 50 million people died.

After the disgraceful, pornographic and insulting display of the corpses, the BBC then characteristically looked for someone to blame for the catastrophe. It would have been nice for them to have been able to come out straight and say it was all George W. Bush's fault. But even the most devoted right-on, Hampstead liberal fan of the Beeb would have found difficulty believing that. So they suggested that US earthquake monitoring systems were to blame.

When all else failed, they blamed God. But anyone with an ounce of humility would not petulantly rise up and blame God for natural disasters. Instead, we would do well to follow the example of the Jewish writers of the Old Testament and regard with awe the power of the created order. The correct response to natural terrors is: "For I will consider the heavens, even the works of thy fingers: the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained. What is man that thou art mindful of him: and the son of man that thou visitest him?"

And this followed by respectful silence.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.