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By Matthew Impelli
Life & Trends Reporter
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A Catholic monk came out as transgender this month, saying the church had "to deal with" trans Catholics.
On May 17, Brother Christian Matson, a Catholic monk in Kentucky, told Religion News Service, "This Sunday, Pentecost 2024, I'm planning to come out publicly as transgender."
"You've got to deal with us, because God has called us into this church," Matson told the outlet. "It's not your church to kick us out of—this is God's church, and God has called us and engrafted us into it."
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Matson's announcement comes amid an ongoing conversation about transgender and LGBTQ+ rights throughout the U.S. Companies and brands that have advocated for the LGBTQ+ community have received a backlash, such as the beer brand Bud Light, which faced a boycott after partnering with Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender activist.
In April, the Vatican published "Infinite Dignity," a 20-page declaration that discussed the Catholic Church's view on transgender individuals. The declaration, which was approved by Pope Francis, said God created men and women as biologically different beings, and that no one should try to alter that plan or "make oneself God."
The document describes gender-affirming surgery as violating God's gift of human dignity and as attempting to play God on the surgeon's table during a "sex-change intervention." An exception was made for surgery to correct "genital abnormalities," which healthcare professionals could help "resolve," the declaration said.
In a statement this week, the Catholic Diocese of Lexington in Kentucky said: "On Pentecost Sunday, Brother Christian Matson, a professed hermit in the Diocese of Lexington, has made it public that he is a transgender person. Brother Christian has long sought to consecrate his life to Christ in the Church by living the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience.
"He has consistently been accompanied by a competent spiritual director and has undergone formation in the Benedictine tradition. He does not seek ordination, but has professed a rule of life that allows him to support himself financially by continuing his work in the arts and to live a life of contemplation in a private hermitage. Bishop John Stowe, OFM Conv., accepted his profession and is grateful to Brother Christian for his witness of discipleship, integrity and contemplative prayer for the Church."
Newsweek has contacted the Vatican and Matson for comment via email and his website's contact form, respectively.
Religion News Service reported that Matson converted to Catholicism in 2010, four years after he transitioned. Matson spoke with a canon lawyer, who advised him to consider becoming a diocesan hermit, but he was later rejected by many Catholic communities, he told the outlet.
"People who knew me said, 'You clearly have a religious vocation,' and these were all people who knew my medical history," Matson told Religion News Service. "But when they would go to the people in the community in charge of making that decision, they ... would often just refuse 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 and expressed openness to allowing him in his church.
"My willingness to be open to him is because it's a sincere person seeking a way to serve the church. Hermits are a rarely used form of religious life ... but they can be either 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 his vows to become a diocesan hermit, under Stowe's direction, Religion News Service reported. He renewed his vows in 2023.
Matson told Religion News Service, "I became Catholic after I transitioned 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."
Update 5/21/24, 3:31 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to include a statement from the Diocese of Lexington.
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