Bishop John Stowe via CDLEX (left) / Christian Matson by Jennifer Hart Yonts via Religion News Service (right)
CV NEWS FEED // On May 21, the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky, issued a statement using male pronouns in reference to a biological woman identified as Brother Christian Matson, a hermit living in Kentucky who recently announced that she identifies as “transgender.”
Religion News Service reported on May 19 that Matson would make the announcement that she is transgender on the feast of Pentecost.
On May 20, CatholicVote contacted the Diocese of Lexington requesting confirmation that the announcement took place.
The Diocese of Lexington Communications Director Edward Bauer told CatholicVote that the Diocese has no further comment on the story, and later added that the Religion News Service article “speaks for itself”.
But on Tuesday, May 21, the Diocese changed course and issued that statement about Matson, saying that: “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,” the statement continues:
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.
The statement about Matson comes two months after the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith published Dignitas Infinita on Human Dignity, a declaration that addressed several topics including gender ideology and sex change.
The declaration criticizes gender ideology for “[intending] to deny the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”
“This foundational difference is not only the greatest imaginable difference but is also the most beautiful and most powerful of them,” the declaration adds:
In the male-female couple, this difference achieves the most marvelous of reciprocities.
…Only by acknowledging and accepting this difference in reciprocity can each person fully discover themselves, their dignity, and their identity.
The declaration also addresses sex change, stating, “the body participates in that dignity as it is endowed with personal meanings, particularly in its sexed condition. It is in the body that each person recognizes himself or herself as generated by others, and it is through their bodies that men and women can establish a loving relationship capable of generating other persons.”
“Teaching about the need to respect the natural order of the human person, Pope Francis affirmed that ‘creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created,’” the declaration continues:
It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.
This is not to exclude the possibility that a person with genital abnormalities that are already evident at birth or that develop later may choose to receive the assistance of healthcare professionals to resolve these abnormalities.
However, in this case, such a medical procedure would not constitute a sex change in the sense intended here.
