Transgender ideology has permeated the culture in countless ways in recent years. Townhall has covered how so-called “transgender” athletes have dominated women’s sports and robbed women of awards and opportunities. In other instances, men who think they are women have robbed women of titles in beauty pageants.
This week, a Catholic monk came out and said that she is a woman who transitioned to live as a man. She reportedly became a Catholic monk after transitioning.
According to multiple reports, Brother Christian Matson, 39, is a “hermit” in the Diocese of Lexington.
Matson told Religion News Service that “he” would officially come out as “transgender” on Pentecost Sunday this year. Matson told RNS that she is the first openly transgender person in her position in the Catholic Church.
“I am currently based in the Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky,” Matson 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.”
Matson was reportedly raised Presbyterian and converted to Catholicism in 2010. This conversion happened four years after she transitioned in college to live as a man.
“You’ve got to deal with us, because God has called us into this church,” Matson said. “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.”
Breaking: Brother Christian Matson has come out as transgender. He is believed to be the first openly transgender person in his position in the Catholic Church. https://t.co/ZQSLClb1T1
— RNS (@RNS) May 19, 2024
The Diocese of Lexington shared a statement in support of Matson (via CDLex.org):
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.
According to the New York Post, the bishop, John Stowe, has been “a leading voice for LGBTQ+ people in the Catholic 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 RNS.
Matson claimed that she did not “have a hidden agenda.”
“People can believe that or not,” she said.
