I’ll admit it. Sometimes I read things just because I know they’ll annoy me. I admit I sometimes type “Father Richard McBrien” or “jesuit” into Google just to see what’s being said now. Is that bad? But such is the case here.

A Jesuit priest who told the London Daily Mail this year that “being gay is not special” – “it’s simply another gift from God who created us as rainbow people,” has become the Jesuit University of San Francisco’s director of University Ministry, according to the California Catholic Daily.

In a university news release, Fr. Donal Godfrey finds it paradoxical “that it is precisely at a Jesuit Catholic university that we can find God’s image in people whose color, faith, culture, language, background, and sexual orientation is different from our own.” Yeah paradoxical. That’s the right word. Godfrey said he wants the ministry “to help celebrate that we are Jesuit, Catholic, and a place that welcomes those of all faiths and none, all at the same time.”

Is sexual orientation a faith, now? Shouldn’t we welcome atheists with en eye towards evangelizing them with the truth? Isn’t that the job of a priest -even a Jesuit one?

Godfrey wants to see more interfaith dialogue at USF, seeing his “aim as helping people to be better, whatever they are.” But what if they’re a sinner. Do we help them be better sinners?

The story says Godfrey is no stranger to San Francisco. No way! I can’t believe it.
Godfrey has been a fixture at San Francisco’s Most Holy Redeemer, a parish deeply involved in homosexual activism, including participation in the city’s yearly Gay Pride parade. Last October, Godfrey presided at a prayer service (broadcast by the BBC on April 22) celebrating homosexuality.

You know, forget everything else about homosexuality. But should we expect a priest to be celebrating anything to do with sex outside of marriage?

At the service, Godfrey said, “most often our churches make it difficult to acknowledge, let alone celebrate, the truth of the rainbow. But in all of this I believe it is God who calls and loves all of us, whatever our sexual orientation.”

We can all agree that God calls us to love all. But that doesn’t mean we approve of everything everyone does. Love sometimes means telling someone they’re wrong. And we must all remember Jesus talking about “the truth of the rainbow” in the Bible. That’s in…uh…Psalm…No…John? Uh I can’t find it in the bible right now but it must be there. Oh wait it must be in the Catholic Catechism. I’ll look later but it must be there. So should I look under “rainbow” or “truth?”