The political conservatism of leading US Catholic bishops is well-known, but it’s worth noting that there are more than 275 active bishops in the US; on the rare occasions that the conservative Catholic media attacks a bishop, it’s usually an indicator that the bishop in question is refusing to toe the conservative line. Such is the case with Bishop John Stowe of Lexington, Kentucky; Catholic World Report recently published a full-throated attack against Bishop Stowe penned by a former head lobbyist for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and other Catholic media have picked up on the attack, demanding Vatican intervention against Stowe. Here’s the story...
The diocesan announcement of May 2024 was simple and straightforward:
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.
Since transitioning during his collegiate years (and before coming to Catholicism), Matson’s journey had been a decade’s worth of frustration and rejection. As Religion News Service tells us:
What followed was roughly a decade of searching and no small amount of rejection. Living in the United Kingdom while pursuing a master’s degree, and later a Ph.D. in theology, Matson entered a vocational discernment program and approached the Jesuit order to ask if he could join.
“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.
Other communities offered similar responses, when they responded at all. “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.”
In one instance, Matson said, a religious leader declined to meet simply to hear his experience as a trans man, saying doing so would be “a waste of time.”
Finally, someone suggested that Matson contact bishops directly to find a path; one of those bishops was Stowe, who immediately supported Matson’s monastic hopes:
Stowe confirmed Matson’s account, saying the then-aspiring brother was recommended to him by a number of people.
“My willingness to be open to him is because it’s a sincere person seeking a way to serve the church,” Stowe said of Matson. “Hermits are a rarely used form of religious life … but they can be either male or female. Because there’s no pursuit of priesthood or engagement in sacramental ministry, and because the hermit is a relatively quiet and secluded type of vocation, I didn’t see any harm in letting him live this vocation.”
He added that Matson’s spiritual journey was “consistent with the calling of that particular vocation.” [...]
Finally, in August 2022, Matson took his first vows as a diocesan hermit — a yearlong commitment — under Stowe’s direction. For the next year, Matson ‘lived a life of basically spending half the day in prayer and half the day doing some form of work’ that included producing and writing at a local theater.
(It’s worth noting that the combination of ministry and the arts is not new; when Fred Rogers graduated from seminary and was ordained in the Presbyterian church, he received a special dispensation to minister to children and families through his then-local TV show instead of assuming the typical ministerial role of pastor to a specific congregation.)
Stowe’s acceptance and approval, coming as they did after Matson’s rejection by multiple religious orders and other bishops, was both consistent with his longtime advocacy for LGBTQ+ Catholics (most recently on the subject of priestly blessings) and groundbreaking in its own way; now that Matson has made his transition public, conservatives are openly calling for sanctions against the Lexington bishop. Local Catholics, however, seem to support both Matson and Stowe. As the Lexington Herald-Leader’s Linda Blackford wrote:
Matson believes he is the first openly transgender person in his position in the church. So, will there be consequences from the Vatican for Brother Christian and Bishop Stowe?
“I would hope not,” said Stan “JR” Zerkowski, the director of the Lexington Diocese’s LGBTQ ministry and the author of “Coming Out and Coming Home: A Gay Catholic Man’s Journey from Marginalization to Ministry, with a Few Miracles Along the Way.”
“I think this is an incredibly positive step for dialogue in the church and for transgender people to witness to their faith in heroic ways,” Zerkowski said. “I think Brother Christian is heroic — the church has neither spoken kindly nor been kind to transgender people, and he still views service to the Lord and to the church as something far greater than something that would cause most people to back down. That’s heroic faith.”
I agree with Zerkowski; while I am not Catholic, it’s obvious that Matson is going up against centuries of bias and discrimination, and standing up for one’s personal faith in that context is heroic in my book. By the same token, Bishop Stowe is taking a major step forward for LGBTQ+ Catholics at the risk of his own position and vocation; that, too, is deserving of praise.
We may not hear more from Brother Matson, given the nature of his monastic vocation, but here’s hoping that we see more coverage of Bishop Stowe’s advocacy for greater inclusion of LGBTQ+ Catholics in the Church’s daily life.
ps> Brother Matson was recently interviewed by WUKY, the University of Kentucky’s public radio station; excerpts wouldn’t do it justice, but I think it well worth your time.