Catholic Archdiocese Encourages Clergy to Attend Meeting of Pro-LGBT, Women’s Ordination Priests

The Archdiocese of St. Louis is formally promoting and encouraging its own priests to attend the upcoming Annual Assembly of the Association of US Catholic Priest’s (AUSCP). Identified as a “date to remember” on its “Announcements for Priests” webpage, the Archdiocese of St. Louis posted an image of the AUSCP’s Assembly flyer with the message:

AUSCP 14th Annual Assembly in Lexington, KY
June 24-27, 2024
For Further Details and to Register, Visit www.auscp.org OR call 872-205-5862

As the Lepanto Institute has been reporting since 2017, the AUSCP is notorious for:

• Promoting women’s sacramental ordination
• Promoting homosexual activism
• Presenting heretical ideas concerning the Eucharist
• Promoting heretical ideas about the Priesthood
• Helping found and lead an international heretical cabal attempting to transform the Church

Given the AUSCP’s involvement with and promotion of ideologies long-condemned by the Church, it is difficult to imagine why the Archdiocese of St. Louis would encourage its priests to attend.  And while the AUSCP’s history of dissidence should stand as enough of a deterrent, the recent list of Assembly speakers provides ample reason to not promote this gathering to priests. Headlining the event are Bishop John Stowe, OFM and Fr. Thomas Reese, SJ.

[Image taken from AUSCP website]

Bishop John Stowe, OFM, is slated to lead the AUSCP Assembly’s retreat, which is fitting as he often speaks and prays at homosexualist organization meetings and conferences. Bp. Stowe was most recently in the news for opening his diocese for a transgender afflicted hermit. His diocese issued a statement on May 21, 2024, that “Bishop John Stowe, OFM Conv., accepted his profession and is grateful to Brother Christian for his witness of discipleship, integrity and contemplative prayer for the Church.”

Bishop Stowe also:

• Is the “Episcopal Advisor” to the LGBT activist group Fortunate Families. Fortunate Families supports same-sex “marriage”and its “foundational Statement” attempts to excuse homosexual activity with an appeal to conscience.
• In 2021 Gave a “Pride Blessing” during a Dignity USA hosted event protesting the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s assertion that God “cannot bless sin.”
• Broke with his brother bishopswho opposed the 2021 homosexualist Equality Act and supported the bill.
• When asked about Fiducia Supplicans by TIME, Bp Stowe stated:

“The Catholic Church believes marriage can only occur between a man and a woman, but a blessing can still hold great significance to queer couples because they act as prayers for God’s presence and help, Stowe says. ‘It almost signifies God’s approval.’” [emphasis added]

[Image taken from AUSCP website]

Fr. Thomas Reese, SJ, is slated to give an address titled “Eucharist for a Synodal Church: Communion, Mission, Participation”.  This is the same Fr. Reese who denied belief in Transubstantiation in a January 2023 article for the National Catholic Reporter “The Eucharist is About More than the Real Presence”. He stated:

“Since my critics often accuse me of heresy, before I go further, let me affirm that I believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I just don’t believe in transubstantiation because I don’t believe in prime matter, substantial forms and accidents that are part of Aristotelian metaphysics.

Thomas Aquinas used Aristotelianism, the avant-garde philosophy of his time, to explain the Eucharist to his generation. What worked in the 13th century will not work today. If he were alive today, he would not use Aristotelianism because nobody grasps it in the 21st century.

So, first, forget transubstantiation. Better to admit that Christ’s presence in the Eucharist is an unexplainable mystery that our little minds cannot comprehend.” [emphasis added]

Fr. Reese’s statement is a denial of the substantial presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and flies in the face of the canons of the Council of Trent which states in session 13 (h/t to this article at One Peter Five):

If any one [denies], that, in the sacrament of the most holy Eucharist, are contained truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ; but saith that He is only therein as in a sign, or in figure, or virtue [i.e., power];^[2] let him be anathema (can. 1).

If any one [says], that, in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucharist, the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and [denies] that wonderful and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the Body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the Blood…which conversion indeed the Catholic Church most aptly calls Transubstantiation; let him be anathema (can. 2).

Clearly, this is not a priest who should be headlining an Assembly ostensibly about the Eucharist!

This is also the same Fr. Reese who surrendered to the culture of death and URGED pro-lifers to support contraception in a twisted version of accepting lesser evils. In his 2018 article “Irish Vote Shows Need for New Pro-Life Strategy” for Religious News Service, he wrote:

“Besides supporting programs to help mothers and children, the pro-life movement also has to support birth control as a means of avoiding unwanted pregnancies. Planned pregnancies do not get aborted; many unplanned pregnancies do.

Those who consider artificial contraception to be wrong must also recognize that abortion is a greater evil. When forced to choose, one must choose the lesser of two evils.” [emphasis added]

Is this really the kind of instruction and fellowship Archbishop Rozanski wants for his priests? Is this the kind of teaching he intends to have introduced to his flock when the priests attending the Assembly return to their parishes?

Faithful Catholics in St. Louis need to contact his Excellency and ask why such an announcement was made and what measures will be taken to safeguard the faithful. Archbishop Rozanski would do well to re-read Acts 20:28-30 and ensure he is following St. Paul’s exhortation:

Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flock of which the holy Spirit has appointed you overseers, in which you tend the church of God that he acquired with his own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come among you, and they will not spare the flock. And from your own group, men will come forward perverting the truth to draw the disciples away after them.