A Catholic monk has come out as a transgender man – saying that the church will have “to deal with” trans people in the community who refuse to compromise their identity for their faith.
Brother Christian Matson, a diocesan hermit in Kentucky, formally came out on Sunday with the permission of his bishop, John Stowe of the Diocese of Lexington, he told the Religious News Service.
“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,” he warned the Catholic Church in an interview with the news outlet.
He may be the first openly trans person in his role in the Catholic Church, Matson added – though the Religious News Service was not able to verify that claim.
Matson, 39, transitioned in college, and converted to Catholicism four years later, he explained.
He hoped his coming out would create a meaningful conversation on a particularly fraught subject in the community.
“You’ve got to deal with us, because God has called us into this church,” Matson – who also has a doctorate in religious studies – said in his message to the church on transgender Catholics.
Matson’s coming out came just one month after the Vatican issued “Infinite Dignity,” a 20-page treatise that described gender theory – as well as abortion and surrogacy – as attacks on humanity’s connection with God.
“Vatican-level documents that have come out on the subject have not engaged with the science at all,” Matson lamented of the church’s official take on trans issues.
He has sent multiple letters to the Vatican, and asked them to engage with more trans individuals, he added.
When he felt called to serve in the church, Matson consulted a canon lawyer about his options, he recalled to the RNS.
The attorney advised him that becoming a diocesan hermit, a role that makes no distinction based on sex or gender, would be the best bet – but Matson was still rejected by several communities before he finally found a place in Kentucky.
“People who knew me said, ‘You clearly have a religious vocation,’ and these were all people who knew my medical history,” Matson said.
“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.”
Stowe, a leading voice for LGBTQ+ people in the Catholic Church, received a letter from Matson in 2020 and oversaw his vows in 2022.
“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.
After an initial year spent almost entirely either in prayer or working at local theater, Matson renewed his vows in 2023.
“I don’t have a hidden agenda, I just want to serve the church,” Matson said. “People can believe that or not.”
Brother Christian Matson did not immediately return The Post’s request for a comment.
