Maybe she should have taken a vow of silence with this one.
A Catholic monk in Kentucky, "Brother" Christian Matson, "came out" as transgender this Sunday, after years in the Catholic Church as a monastic hermit.
To clear up confusion: This is a woman who has pretended to be a man and underwent medical procedures like testosterone injection to appear like a man.
'This Sunday, Pentecost 2024, I'm planning to come out publicly as transgender,' Matson told Religion News Service on Friday (May 17), saying he [sic] was speaking out with the permission of his bishop, John Stowe of the Diocese of Lexington in Kentucky.
Yeah, she even got permission and approval from her bishop. In KENTUCKY. Hidden away deep in Appalachia. This ain't San Francisco.
And to come out on Pentecost! Do you see the symbolism?
Matson believes she's the first transgender monk, and is almost certainly the first openly trans monk, serving in the Catholic Church.
Essentially, Matson was allowed to join the ranks of Catholic religious service because she chose to live as a hermit, in isolation and away from community, due to a Vatican rule barring anyone with a sex-change surgery from being a priest or being married.
"' am currently based in the Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky,' he [sic] wrote in an email to friends and supporters on Sunday. 'I live in a hermitage at the top of a wooded hill, which I share with my German Shepherd rescue, Odie, and with the Blessed Sacrament, which was installed in my oratory shortly before Christmas.'
From Religion News Service on why this woman decided out out herself in defiance of the Church's teachings:
Matson approached a canon lawyer to discuss his [sic] options and was told that only two aspects of Catholic life were categorically off the table: marriage and the priesthood. According to Matson, the canon lawyer recommended being upfront about his [sic] status as a transgender man in any vocational conversations with church leaders and mentioned the role of a diocesan hermit, which could prove less challenging than enlisting with an existing religious order.
But she couldn't just keep it to herself anymore. Trans folx have to be loud and proud in 2024.
Raised in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ...
Of course. You can take the monk outta the PCUSA but you can't take the PCUSA outta the monk.
Matson converted to Catholicism in 2010 — four years, he [sic] noted, after transitioning in college, a step he [sic] refers to as a part of his [sic] 'medical history' rather than a 'central part of my personal identity.'
But, today, it is part of her "personal identity" and she needs to announce to the world, "Hey, look at me!"
Not very monk-ish or hermit-like behavior.
Matson spent a decade in school and around the Catholic Church, searching for a place to fit in. In the 2010s, she was rejected by the Jesuits - yes, the Jesuits.
'They said, "No, we just don't see how this would work for us," which was crushing, because that's where I felt called,' Matson said.
Good on her for not hiding anything and being honest about her surgeries and whatnot, but she still wouldn't take no for an answer, and eventually ended up in Kentucky of all places, so she could be locked away as a hermit.
But Matson's call to religious life wouldn't abate. While visiting a monastery during a retreat, he [sic] found himself [sic] unable to sleep, consumed with the idea of starting 'a religious community of and for artists — artists who are living together, (operating) in the church through their art, and ministering to the loneliness and sense of precarity many artists experience.'
Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're just a hippie. If your entire faith life is about starting an "artist commune" then, I hate to break it to you, the life of a Christian monk may not be for you.
But in 2022, Matson met Bishop Stowe, an LGBTQ+ friendly bishop who "didn't see the harm" in allowing her to become a hermit, and Matson took a one-year vow to live in the hermitage. She then renewed her vow for another year in 2023, but during that time decided that she must "come out."
'I have to say something,' Matson told his [sic] spiritual director. He settled on Pentecost, which emphasizes preaching 'the good news of God's love to everyone,' he [sic] said. It was also the day in the church calendar when he'd [sic] been baptized years before.
'I can't stand by and let this false and, at times, culpably ignorant understanding of what it means to be transgender continue to hurt people,' he [sic] said. 'If I don't say anything and allow the church to continue to make decisions based on incorrect information, then I'm not serving the church.'
She's made it her mission to correct the Catholic Church on 2,000 years of church history, the thousands of years of the Mosaic Law before that, and all our scientific knowledge until about 15 minutes ago!
This chick has the answers! Everyone else has missed it! Men can be women! Women can be men! It's all just one big misunderstanding.
On its face, it's ridiculous. But give it 10 more years under the leadership of people like Bishop John Stowe, and the Catholic Church might have a brand-new saint.
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