Is the Pope a Wiccan?

In the last go around about Wicca I argued that while many conservative pundits are upset about the growing number of Wiccan groups on college campuses and elsewhere, that as often as not there are plenty of people who call themselves Christians who have views to the Left of Wiccans.

A good example of that is the Pope! No, seriously. One of the common complaints lodged against Wicca by conservative Christian commentators is that it is a throwback to nature worshipping pre-Christian pagan cults. But even the Pope is down with the Gaia hypothesis,

John Paul told the farmers Sunday [at Mass said on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica] to “resist the temptations of productivity and profit that work to the detriment of the respect of nature.” Saying God entrusted land to mankind to take care of it, the pope said: “When you forget this principle, becoming tyrants and not custodians of the Earth, sooner or later the Earth rebels.”

The Earth “rebels”? These comments were part of a broad warning about biotech that sounded like it had been ghost written by Jeremy Rifkin. The Pope’s views are relatively mild compared to some Christian thinkers in the United States who want to reposition Christianity as the environmentalist religion.