By: Chuck Colbert/TRT Reporter
The Pilot, the official newspaper of the Boston archdiocese and the oldest Roman Catholic publication of its kind in the country, has pulled a column, an opinion piece suggesting the devil may be responsible for making people gay — in their mothers’ wombs.
The author, moreover, issued a retraction and apology, which The Pilot posted on its web site, Nov. 2.
Published Friday, Oct. 28, the column was titled “Some fundamental questions on same-sex attraction.” Attorney Daniel Avila penned it.
“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,” wrote Avila a frequent contributor to the weekly publication.
“Disruptive imbalances in nature that thwart encoded processes point to supernatural actors who, unlike God, do not have the good of persons at heart,” Avila opined.
“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,” he added.
In his column, Avila notes that no one has found a “gay gene.” And yet, he wrote, “The most widely accepted scientific hypothesis points to random imbalances in maternal hormone levels and identifies their disruptive prenatal effects on fetal development as the likely and major cause.”
Avila is the Marriage and Family policy advisor, a position created to support the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops’ Subcommittee on the Promotion and Defense of Marriage. The USCCB is the official lobbying arm of the hierarchy in the country.
From 1997 until earlier this year, Avila served as Policy and Research associate director for the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, the official lobbying arm of the local Church.
Avila holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from St. Francis University, Fort Wayne, Ind., and a law degree from Valparaiso School of Law. Also located in Northern Indiana, Valparaiso University, a private, independent institution, has historic ties to the Lutheran Church.
For days, Avila’s opinion piece gained considerable traction over the Internet, prompting blog postings, for example, by Right Wing Watch, The New Civil Rights Movement, Bilerico, Joe My God, and the news site Minnesota Independent. Locally, the column prompted a front-page, Nov. 3 Metro Section news story in the Boston Globe.
The Associated Press ran a story.
Sure enough, Avila drew vigorous responses from LGBT advocacy organizations, a mainstream Catholic worshipping community, a local priest, and gay men among the faithful in the pews.
“Avila’s bizarre theories are unscientific and defamatory,” said Wayne Besen, executive director of Truth Wins Out, an advocacy group based in Burlington, Vt. “Telling Catholic mothers with LGBT children that Satan entered their womb and caused their child’s homosexuality is spiritual abuse of the highest order.”
“It is outrageous for an official advisor to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to make such an appalling statement at all, much less in the approved newspaper of the Archdiocese of Boston,” added John Becker, the organization’s director of communications and development.
Avila’s new position with the U.S. bishop bothers Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive of Dignity USA, the nation’s oldest GLBT Catholic organization.
“The fact that this man, who holds such extreme views, continues to serve the bishops on their policy on justice shows we have a tremendous problem in the Church,” said Duddy-Burke.
And yet, Duddy-Burke voiced hope and encouragement by “the immediate and vocal response” from Catholics nationwide, which she said, “Shows that Catholics are taking ownership. Real moral leadership is coming from the grassroots church.”
During a telephone interview, Duddy-Burke also said that Avila’s piece is a form of “bullying.”
In a petition, Equally Blessed, a Catholic advocacy coalition of pro-LGBT equality organizations, has called “upon our Catholic bishops, who meet November 14-16, 2011, in Baltimore, to make an end to bullying and violence a priority.”
Dignity is an Equally Blessed coalition member.Meanwhile, The Pilot column upset John Kelly, a parishioner at St. Cecilia’s, located in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood. The church is widely known for its Rainbow Ministry of “All Are Welcome” to LGBT Catholics.
“I thought that the Catholic Church was trying to bring back people to the church,” he said.
“How and why I became gay is not the question. I know that all gay people and I suffer from discrimination in the Catholic Church,” Kelly said, adding, “I had to search to find a church, which made me feel welcome.”
Kelly said he voiced these concerns in a letter to the editor of The Pilot.
“Contrary to Dan Avila, not all the faithful point to the devil and his malcontent minions to explain earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes,” said Rev. Austin Fleming, a local priest in Concord, Mass. “Nor do they expect that a resolution of the mysteries and variables of sexual attraction will pull back a curtain on the evil one hacking into genetic codes and redirecting human passions.”
“Church teaching on these matters is difficult for many to understand, let alone accept,” Fleming added. “As tempting as a medieval cosmology may be for some, it will not shed instructive light on a question as critical and complex as that of sexual orientation. This topic and the people discussing it deserve a theology steeped in deeper wisdom.”
Like Kelly, Fleming voiced his viewpoint in a letter to The Pilot editor, Antonio Enrique.
Staff members at the Paulist Center, located in Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, were also aghast.
In a note to community members, staffers shared the contents of their letter to The Pilot. “We feel compelled to express our dismay,” they wrote.
“Beyond the highly questionable theology of this writer, pastoral ministry and care for GLBTQ Catholics, for any human person, requires first preserving their dignity as children of God. Our shared mission of outreach and pastoral care prohibits inflicting harm and pain on any human person,” the staff added.
Staffers continued, “This article directly and intentionally causes pain for gay Catholics, their families, especially their mothers, their friends and their worship communities,” adding, “The article has no scriptural basis, vague Catholic theological constructs, and no connection with the Gospel of Christ.”
The Pilot’s Oct. 28 opinion piece is not the first time a contributor has caused a disturbance among the faithful.
Columnist Michael Pakaluk raised the ire of many when he suggested in an opinion piece, “Children in the custody of same-sex couples in parochial schools,” published June 4, 2010, that a reason not to allow children with gay parents in Catholic schools is the danger they would bring pornography to class.
Another Pilot columnist Dale O’Leary often writes about “same-sex attraction” (SSA) and “gender identity” as a “disorder.” On July 22, 2011, for instance, she opined, “Each person with SSA has his or her own unique personal history. A number of therapists are convinced that some babies are born more vulnerable to the anxiety. This vulnerability combined with early negative experiences can affect the babies’ ability to identify with their same-sex parent or peers. The child grows up trying to find the love and acceptance missed as a baby and this need becomes interpreted as sexual desire. Because these negative experiences occur during the first two years of life before memory, GLBTQ persons may honestly say they always felt different and were born that way.”
O’Leary’s piece, “True Compassion,” urges the “hierarchy, clergy, religious, and laity” to “step up and face the challenge posed by militant gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer activists” – what she terms “the LGBT coalition” – and explain “why the Church does not – cannot – accept sexual relations between two persons of the same sex” and “do so with love and compassion, but without sacrificing the truth.”
Enough is enough for some gay Catholics. An apology and retraction is insufficient, they say, pointing to a bad pattern of editorial judgment.
“Because of this pattern of needing to retract and apologize for offensive columns about gay persons and their families, Cardinal O’Malley, as publisher of The Pilot, should strongly consider requesting that Mr. Enrique submit his resignation,” said Charles Martel, a local social worker in private practice and co-founder of Catholics for Marriage Equality. “Ultimately, this will be the only way that the cardinal shows he is serious about the meaning of accountability in the Archdiocese.”
