It’s been six months since I’ve posted on the Church of Gaia, so what follows are a few news items of interest.

First, though, who would want to dump a little lamb in a wheelie bin?  The link carries a photo of the beautiful little creature found on Wednesday of Holy Week.  He was trying to kick his way out of the bin.  Amazingly, he was fine apart from an ulcerated eye, for which he is being treated.  He is now with an RSPCA foster carer.  Someone, though, is responsible for putting the lamb in the bin, and the RSPCA are asking for help in finding that person.

Now, on to the Church of Gaia. One could say their creed is the leftist mantra ‘people will have to die’, because as far as many Communists and utopians are concerned, it is the only way of achieving nirvana on this planet.

As many of us suspected, those energy-saving lightbulbs are downright unhealthy. They not only turn your house into a hazchem site if one breaks, but now it transpires they could also cause cancer.  From the Telegraph (emphases mine):

Peter Braun, who carried out the tests at the Berlin’s Alab Laboratory, said: “For such carcinogenic substances it is important they are kept as far away as possible from the human environment.”

The bulbs are already widely used in the UK following EU direction to phase out traditional incandescent lighting by the end of this year.

But the German scientists claimed that several carcinogenic chemicals and toxins were released when the environmentally-friendly compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) were switched on, including phenol, naphthalene and styrene.

Andreas Kirchner, of the Federation of German Engineers, said: “Electrical smog develops around these lamps.

“I, therefore, use them only very economically. They should not be used in unventilated areas and definitely not in the proximity of the head.”

Vorsprung durch technik.  We never had these problems with incandescents, did we? I understand that they are still available if one does an online search for ‘heat balls’.  Incandescents do warm a room.  These new environmentally-friendly ones are not only potentially dangerous but wallet-emptying as well.  They are not meant to be turned on and off but must stay on for long periods of time in order to be economical.  Do a bulk order for the incandescents whilst you can.

Next, 1960s cult leader and convicted murderer Charles Manson, 76, is deeply concerned about climate change. Now what does that tell us, boys and girls? The Telegraph gives us a few bon mots from his recent interview for the Spanish edition of Vanity Fair magazine:

Referring to the crimes for which he was sentenced to death, a penalty later commuted to life imprisonment when California abolished the death penalty, Manson said: “I live in the underworld, I’m very mean, I’m a very bad man …

During the interviews with Spain’s Vanity Fair magazine, published on Tuesday, he said: “You have to accept yourself as God. You have to realise you’re just the Devil just as much as you’re God, that you’re everything and you’re nothing at all.”

Refusing to discuss whether he still posed a danger to society ahead of a parole review scheduled for next year, he instead warned of a “greater danger” – that of global warming.

“Everyone’s God and if we don’t wake up to that there’s going to be no weather because our polar caps are melting because we’re doing bad things to the atmosphere,” he said.

“The automobiles and fossil fuels are destroying the atmosphere and we won’t have air to breathe.

“If we don’t change that as rapidly as I’m speaking to you now, if we don’t put the green back on the planet and put the trees back that we’ve butchered, if we don’t go to war against the problem …” he added, trailing off.

Note how he believes the theosophical, New Age notion that each of us is divine.  This is called pantheism, and it is a heresy. Charles Manson is the best advert yet against adopting New Age and environmentalist beliefs.  Quick, someone tell Oprah, because she has done more than many — through the magical media of television and the internet — to spread this nonsense.  Read my posts from April 2011 on Oprah and Eckhart Tolle and Oprah and New Age beliefs. Another post from the same week ties together the common threads between New Age, environmentalism and Communism:  ‘Theosophy, New Age, the Venus Project and Zeitgeist films’.  Also tied in with that is what I call secular pietism.

And neatly encompassing all this is Bolivian President Evo Morales’s new edict — in line with UN policy — to give rights to Mother Earth, Gaia. (He was not the first, Ecuador paved the way, so to speak, in 2008.) The Daily Mail reports (be sure to note the comments beneath the article — staggering):

Bolivia is drawing up a draft UN treaty which would give Mother Earth the same rights as humans, including the right to life, to pure water and clean air …

It aims to establish 11 new rights for nature which include: the right to life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from human alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified or genetically altered.

Bolivia’s large indigenous population is ruled by Latin America’s first indigenous president Evo Morales, who was elected in 2006.

Morales is an outspoken critic in the UN of countries which are not prepared to limit climate change by holding temperatures to a 1C rise.

Bolivia’s ambassador to the UN, Pablo Salon, says his country seeks to achieve harmony with nature, and hinted that mining and other companies would come under greater scrutiny …

The radical new conservation measures have been drawn up to reduce pollution and control industry.

In a pamphlet circulated soon after his election Morales drew up 10 ‘commandments’ as part of Bolivia’s plan to save the planet, beginning with the need ‘to end capitalism’ …

The treaty is part of a complete restructuring of the Bolivian legal system and has been heavily influenced by a resurgent indigenous Andean spiritual world view which puts the environment and the earth deity known as the ‘Pachamama’ at the centre of all life.

The draft of the new law states: ‘She (the Pachamama/Mother Earth) is sacred, fertile and the source of life that feeds and cares for all living beings in her womb.

‘She is in permanent balance, harmony and communication with the cosmos. She is comprised of all ecosystems and living beings, and their self-organisation.’

There is so much to say on this.  First, Bolivia’s president is openly Marxist.  From Wikipedia:

Morales is an outspoken supporter of the iconic Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, who was executed by CIA-assisted Bolivian soldiers in 1967. On October 8, 2009, at a ceremony in Vallegrande, marking the 42nd anniversary of Che’s death, Morales remarked that “Guevara is invincible in his ideals, and in all this history, after so many years, he inspires us to continue fighting, changing not only Bolivia, but all of Latin America and the world.”

Second, Morales practices a syncretism of Incanism and Roman Catholicism.

Third, has he stopped to think about how his people will be fed if the Bolivian economy slows down as a result of these new measures?  For as long as I can remember (Maryknoll was the first magazine I started reading as a small child), the indigenous Bolivians have been among the world’s poorest people.  They need more food than they can raise and they also need better basic healthcare.  I guess it will continue to be up to the missionaries to provide both.

Finally, he obviously doubts the ability of God to care for and rejuvenate the Earth.  Granted, as the article states, Bolivia has had natural disasters and some parts of it have been ruined by invasive mining techniques.  However, there is not only a prediction of natural disasters before the end of the world but also a call to repentance, as Jesus stated in Matthew 24.

Unfortunately, the Catholic Church is complicit in the cult of Pachamama, especially among nuns. Yes, by all means, industry and we as individuals should be taking care of our surroundings, but a cult of Gaia and Communism isn’t going to solve those problems.  In fact, the inevitable result will be that people — those beings with souls — die.  And that would be tragic, indeed.

‘You shall not murder’ (Exodus 20:13) — which Jesus also said (Matthew 5:21, Matthew 19:18, Mark 10:19 and Luke 18:20).