Transgender Hermit Announcement Poses Questions About Church’s Teaching on Religious Life
A hermit in Kentucky who publicly identified as transgender this past weekend has prompted questions about how the Catholic Church should deal with such cases in religious life given the Church’s opposition to what Pope Francis has called “gender ideology.”
The announcement has also raised questions about how the hermit, a female who identifies as a man, got religious training at a Benedictine monastery for men.
Brother Christian Matson, the hermit’s religious name, went public about Matson’s gender identity in a Religion News Service story published May 19, which was based on interviews with Matson and with Bishop John Stowe, a Conventual Franciscan who leads the Diocese of Lexington, Kentucky, where the hermit lives.
Theresa Farnan, a founding member of the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Person and Identity Project, which provides resources to Catholic schools and dioceses about the Church’s teaching on gender identity, said Matson’s public presentation as a male hermit is problematic.
She noted that either a male or a female can live as a hermit, which is a solitary endeavor.
“However, presenting a woman religious in such a way that implies that she is a male religious clearly is giving scandal and causing disorientation to the faithful by implying that there is no conflict between our faith and the transgender lifestyle and ideology,” Farnan told the Register.
