Jesuit San Fran Parish Promotes Retreat With Pantheist Pro-LGBT Priest

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SAN FRANCISCO (ChurchMilitant.com) - A Jesuit San Francisco parish is promoting an upcoming retreat with a priest who says LGBT people show God's "playfulness."

Saint Agnes Catholic Church in San Francisco describes itself as "an inclusive urban community, rich in diversity of age, ethnicity, gender, orientation, culture, talent, & treasure ... ."

Meanwhile, the website maintains that the parish gay and lesbian ministry "promotes full membership in the Body of Christ and the Church through education and understanding of Church teachings."

It is also promoting a retreat with a priest of the Augustinian religious order, Fr. Paul Morrissey, called "Room at the Table: LGBTQ People and Families — A Gift of God to the Church."

The retreat is being held on August 5–7 at the Marianist Retreat Center in Eureka, Missouri. The event brochure says he was the editor of an international spirituality newsletter for gay priests and religious from 1977 to 1990.

He is a known and open supporter of same-sex relationships. Last year when the Supreme Court legalized so-called same-sex marriage, he posted on Facebook, "So happy for all the LGBT people and their families! I hope our Catholic Church will discuss this with them, and listen as well as teach."

Last year, Morrissey wrote an article for the National Catholic Reporter titled "Can God Surprise Us?" In his attempt to argue people with same-sex attraction are "born that way" and as God intends them to be, he reveals that his definition of "God" is not the same God of the Catholic faith.

We know that human beings emerged from the evolutionary, creative, loving power we call God only 250,000 years ago. We know that even now the world is evolving in many species and transitions that we can hardly imagine or perhaps cannot handle.

He continues,

What will we allow God's creative imagination to unfold before us and with us? Is there room for surprise? For a child with Down Syndrome to draw out of us love we never knew we had? For a gay or lesbian person to help us realize God's playfulness, mercy and revelation of "his" own incomprehensible mystery? For transgender people?

Saint Agnes, however, is violating its own mission statement by promoting an event that not only confirms people in homosexual activity, but also directing them towards a priest whose preaching openly opposes Church teaching on God, human nature and human sexuality.

It's not the only San Francisco parish to openly go against the Church.

Most Holy Redeemer is another notoriously pro-LGBT parish, describing itself as "a Christian Community in the Roman Catholic tradition."

On Wednesday, the parish Facebook page featured an article from the well-known liberal news outlet The Huffington Post titled "Gay, Catholic and Proud." The post has been deleted.

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