Daniel Avila on Friday offered his
resignation from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
after coming under fire for a column that blamed the devil for people
being gay.
According to The Associated Press,
a spokesman for the Roman Catholic bishops said the group had
accepted Avila's resignation on Friday.
Avila, who had advised the group's
Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, unofficially
referred to himself as “the bishop's marriage guy.” He had
represented the USCCB on the issue of gay marriage at this year's
Values Voter Summit, which is sponsored by the Christian conservative
group Family Research Council (FRC), a vocal opponent of gay rights.
In the first part of an op-ed printed
last week in the Boston Pilot, the official newspaper of the
Archdiocese of Boston, Avila attempted to address the causes of
same-sex attraction.
“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,” his
column concludes.
On Wednesday, the paper retracted the
piece and issued an apology, saying it “failed to recognize the
theological error in the column before publication,” but did not
provide any details of Avila's error.
Avila offered a halfhearted apology
which could be interpreted as saying that discrimination against gay
men and lesbians is justified and supported by the Catholic Church:
“[T]he Church opposed, as I do too, all unjust discrimination and
the violence against persons that unjust discrimination inspires.”
DignityUSA, the nation's largest group
of LGBT Catholics, had called for Avila's dismissal.
“This shows that Catholic officials
are willing to go to extremes in their anti-gay campaign,” said the
group's executive director, Marianne Duddy-Burke. “[T]he
Archdiocese of Boston and the USCCB should immediately terminate
their relationship with Mr. Avila.”