[Fundie warns of deadly danger of non-Catholic environmentalists.]

Catholic teaching on this subject is profoundly different from pagan-inspired environmentalism. Catholic environmentalism is Christ-centered, not earth-centered; the Church teaches that Christians are called to protect the environment because caring for creation is part of God’s plan for salvation. The pagan, in contrast, disregards Christian theology, and sees environmentalism as a way to exalt Mother Nature over everything else. And since pagans view children as mortal threats to the environment, they have tried to suppress their numbers through aggressive population control and abortion: Humanity must be sacrificed to pay heed to the pagan gods.

The Pope’s message is clear: Christians are the ones who should be taking the lead in environmental concerns; otherwise, the movement will be dominated by wayward “green” secularists. The Pope has made a similar point against Marxists, in their efforts to hijack and distort Christianity’s teachings about the poor.

Francis has repeatedly lashed out at paganism’s immoral efforts to thwart the will of God by pushing contraception, abortion, gay marriage, euthanasia and gender theory—comparing the latter to nuclear war, and even to Nazi efforts to corrupt the young through the Hitler Youth movement.

The danger of modern paganism is not an overblown fear by faithful Christians—historically, when it has been ignored, it has led to ruin and disaster. As Karla Poewe shows in her brilliant work, New Religions and the Nazis, it was precisely this evil conception of man which corrupted so many Christians into embracing the anti-Semitic Nazi creed, even as it had no connection to the Bible:

By blaming anti-Semitism on Christianity, scholars have badly misled their readers. In nineteenth and early twentieth century Germany it was not Christianity that was, nor Christians who were by virtue of their faith, anti-Semitic. Rather it was neo-pagans both within and without the Church, who had an intense dislike of Christianity precisely because it was Semitic.

Today, the menace of paganism is not as overt and extreme, but it is every bit as deadly to souls, in its subtle effort to appropriate and destroy Christian faith under the guise of helping the poor, the earth, or promoting sexual responsibility.