Church official apologizes for piece suggesting same-sex attraction is devil’s work

By Brian MacQuarrie, Martin Finucane and and Michael Levenson, Globe Staff

A former top Catholic official in Massachusetts apologized today for an opinion piece he wrote in the Boston archdiocese’s official newspaper suggesting that same-sex attraction is the work of the devil.

The commentary by Daniel Avila, published in Friday’s issue of The Pilot, was deleted from the newspaper’s website late this afternoon. Avila’s apology will appear in the issue to be published this week, archdiocesan officials said.

“I deeply apologize for the hurt and confusion that this column caused,” Daniel Avila, a policy adviser at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, said in a statement.

Avila, who formerly worked as associate director for policy and research at the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, said his piece did not represent the official position of the Catholic bishops and that the column was not authorized for publication by the conference as it was supposed to be.

In the piece, titled “Some fundamental questions on same-sex attraction,” Avila wrote that “disruptive imbalances in nature that thwart encoded processes point to supernatural actors who, unlike God, do not have the good of persons at heart.”

He continued, “Whenever natural causes disturb otherwise typical biological development, leading to the personally unchosen beginnings of same-sex attraction, the ultimate responsibility, on a theological level, is and should be imputed to the evil one, not God.”

Terrence Donilon, spokesman for the archdiocese, said the decision to retract the commentary was the result of communication among the archdiocese, the US bishops conference, and Avila.

“It was a problem, and we would have dealt with it if Dan had resisted” writing an apology, Donilon said. “This one clearly just got away from him. He’s passionate about his faith and passionate about his church.”

Kara Suffredini, executive director of MassEquality, criticized church officials for allowing the piece to be printed. “It bothers me that they didn’t recognize in the first instance that this was not a piece that should have been published,” she said.

Donilon said the decision to publish the piece lay with Pilot editor Antonio Enrique.

“As we absorbed what was in the paper, we said, ‘Whoa, that’s a problem,’ ” Donilon said of the reaction of archdiocesan officials. “That’s not the position of the church or the archdiocese.”

In the commentary, Avila wrote that no one had found a “gay gene” and that the most widely accepted scientific hypothesis was that “random imbalances in maternal hormone levels” had “disruptive prenatal effects on fetal development.”

But Avila said that Catholics “must look for “ultimate explanations that transcend the strictly physical world.”

“In other words, the scientific evidence of how same-sex attraction most likely may be created provides a credible basis for a spiritual explanation that indicts the devil,” Avila wrote.

In his apology, Avila wrote that the Catholic church’s teachings “make it clear that all persons are created in the image and likeness of God and have inviolable dignity. Likewise, the church proclaims the sanctity of marriage as the permanent, faithful, fruitful union of one man and one woman. The church opposes, as I do too, all unjust discrimination and the violence against persons that unjust discrimination inspires.”

Donilon praised Avila’s decision to apologize and said he expected that Avila would continue to write for The Pilot.