A Catholic monk came out as transgender this month and said the church was “dealing with” trans Catholics.
On May 17, Brother Christian Matson, a Catholic monk in Kentucky, told Religion News Service, “This Sunday, Pentecost 2024, I plan to come out publicly as transgender.”
“You’re dealing with us because God called us into this church,” Matson told the newspaper. “It’s not your church to kick us out; this is God’s church, and God has called us and grafted us into it.”
Matson’s announcement comes amid an ongoing conversation about transgender and LGBTQ+ rights in the US. Companies and brands that have advocated for the LGBTQ+ community have faced a backlash, such as beer brand Bud Light, which faced a boycott after collaborating with Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender person. activist.
In April, the Vatican published “Infinite Dignity,” a 20-page statement discussing the Catholic Church’s views on transgender people. The statement, which was approved by Pope Francis, said that God created men and women as biologically different beings, and that no one should try to change that plan or “make themselves God.”
The document describes gender confirmation surgery as a violation of God’s gift of human dignity and as an attempt to play God on the surgeon’s table during a “gender reassignment intervention.” An exception was made for surgeries to correct “genital abnormalities,” which health care professionals could help “fix,” the statement said.
Newsweek has contacted the Vatican and Matson for comment via email and the contact form on his website, respectively.
Religion News Service reported that Matson converted to Catholicism in 2010, four years after he converted. Matson spoke to a canon lawyer, who advised him to consider becoming a diocesan hermit, but he was later rejected by many Catholic communities, he told the newspaper.
“People who knew me said, ‘You clearly have a religious calling,’ and these were all people who knew my medical history,” Matson told Religion News Service. “But when they went to the people in the community who were responsible for making that decision, they often refused to even meet with me.”
Matson’s Bishop, John Stowe of the Diocese of Lexington in Kentucky, told Religion News Service that he received a letter from Matson in 2020 expressing openness to accepting him into his church.
“My willingness to open up to him is because he is a sincere person who is looking for a way to serve the church. Hermits are a rarely used form of religious life … but they can be male or female,” Stowe told the outlet. Newsweek has contacted Stowe for comment via a contact form on the Diocese of Lexington’s website.
In 2022, Matson took a vow to become a diocesan hermit, under Stowe’s leadership, Religion News Service reported. He renewed his vows in 2023.
Matson told Religion News Service: “I became a Catholic after converting because of the Catholic understanding – the sacramental understanding – of the body, of creation, of the desirability of the visible unity of the Church, and primarily because of the Eucharist.”
Source: Newsweek
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