Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Clay Wallace, WUKY
Can you walk me through the story of your vocational calling?
Brother Christian Matson
I was raised Presbyterian and became Catholic in 2010 while I was at the University of Oxford. I met the Jesuits there who ran the university and I immediately felt a sense of religious vocation. Religious life was what I had been looking for my entire life. As a kid, I had this dream to be a knight for Christ, to go around the world doing good for people. When I met the Jesuits, I was like, “Ah, that’s basically what a Jesuit does,” and I immediately felt called to serve God in that way.
But I knew, because of my medical history, I was going to face some issues.
I talked to a canon lawyer and he basically said “The only two options that are not open to you are priesthood and marriage; religious life could be difficult, but it’s theoretically possible. Just be open with whoever you discern with about your medical history.”
That was always my plan. So I ended up spending over 10 years talking to different communities trying to find a place. My late Jesuit spiritual director went to his province every year that he knew me to say, “Please consider him as a candidate.”
What would generally happen is the vocations directors would say, “I think you absolutely have a vocation,” and then they’d go to the superior who would say “I just don’t feel comfortable dealing with this because the Church hasn’t given me clear permission to consider you.”
That happened with multiple communities. I just wasn’t finding an open door.
I was, at the same time, working in the arts and talking with other artists who were discerning religious life. We were finding that some communities were saying you have to give up your artwork in order to be a religious. We were being told, “Maybe it’s something you can do as a hobby, but it can’t fit with your ministry.”
We realized there was no community dedicated to ministry through the arts. So, while I was on retreat at a monastery one weekend, I couldn’t sleep and wrote out this idea of a religious community for artists to serve the church through the arts and to minister to the spiritual needs of artists. I shared that with my spiritual director, with the Jesuit vocations director I was talking with at the time, and with the leaders of the vocations program I was in and all of them said, “We think you need to pursue this.”
So, I moved back to New York and was working with artists, doing the work I felt called to do: putting together an intentional community of artists that were living together, working for the Church, doing the Catholic Artist Connection. I was doing all the service-oriented ministry that I felt called to do, but without the religious life context.
Eventually, talking to my spiritual director, she said “You need an experience of religious life. If you can’t find a community that’s open to you, then maybe there’s a bishop who would be open to this idea of community.”
I asked a friend for recommendations. He gave me Bishop John Stowe’s name. I reached out to him and he was immediately open. He asked me to spend some time in formation with a community. And then, after about 10 years in private vows, I ended up making public vows as a diocesan hermit with Bishop John.
The reason my vocation is a diocesan hermit is it got to the point where I realized that my medical history might be a barrier in asking anyone else to join, and I was faced with the choice of discerning whether a lay community of artists or religious life was more important to me.
I discerned that I wanted to serve God as a monk, no matter what I was doing. That’s now been almost two years that I’ve been in vows, and it’s been even more life-giving as I proceed, so it feels like this is going in the right direction.
Clay
So, is it appropriate to call you a monk?
Christian:
Most generally, when you think of a monk, you think of somebody who’s a member of a monastery. I do find myself in the monastic tradition - that’s where I did my formation.
Saint Benedict’s Rule says there are four types of monks - two good kinds, two bad kinds. One good kind is the Cenobites, who live in the monastery together, and he says that’s the strongest kind. But the other [good kind] is the Anchorites, or the Hermits, who live by themselves, which is where I place myself.
I’m a hermit, so I’m in the monastic tradition, which is why I colloquially use the term “monk” to describe myself. It’s the religious tradition in which I find my home.
Clay
Are there any other hermits within the Lexington Diocese?
Christian
No, I’m the first one.
Clay
Ever?
Christian
First one in the history of the Diocese of Lexington, as far as Bishop John and I are aware.
Clay
How does your vocation currently allow you to reconcile those spheres of art and artistry with religious life?
Christian
It’s controversial. I even had friends when I was talking about the religious community of artists idea who said “Oh, no, religious can’t work in the arts. Or, if they do, it has to be sacred art.”
But there are religious from multiple communities that work in the arts. For me, it is part-time work; it’s not my entire day. The priority is always on the life of prayer here at the hermitage. That’s where I start the day, that’s the bulk of the day.
But when you encounter God in prayer - and in contemplative prayer, especially - it overflows into your life. I believe that, in many ways, the artist’s vocation is also contemplative. You encounter God through story, through images, through sound.
That encounter with God in prayer overflows into wanting to express that. The way I know how to express that is through artistic form, whether it’s writing a play, whether it’s directing a play or producing a play. That’s the way I’m made.
And, then, the encounters I have with people, because performing arts is a very collaborative art form... People, when they know that I’m a monk, they’ll share with me their difficulties - things that they’re going through with their lives, places where they don’t feel welcome.
Especially in theater, there are a lot of LGBT folks who have come from religious backgrounds and have a deep sense of spirituality that’s tied to their artistry, but they don’t always feel welcome in the professional world because they don’t feel they can bring their faith to their profession, or in their churches because they don’t feel they can bring their full selves as artists, or as artists who are LGBT.
So there are a lot of of people who feel isolated in many ways. I’m able to listen to them, affirm them, encourage them, and then bring them back to prayer in the hermitage. It’s a natural kind of breathing in and breathing out, to bring that experience of God, to share it with others, and then to bring the experiences of the people that I encounter back into the hermitage, where sitting in front of the tabernacle with Jesus is always the core element.
Clay
People often think of coming out as a thing people do at the beginning of their transition, but you transitioned in the early 2000s?
Christian
2005 is really when I started, yeah.
Clay
Why was it important to come out now?
Christian
It’s not something I ever wanted to do. When I transitioned, I immediately went what’s called “deep stealth,” where it’s just private information you don’t share. I didn’t transition to be seen as trans, I transitioned to be, act, and be seen as a man. It’s part of my medical history.
If you had asked me 10 years ago, “Do you ever want to come out?” I would have said “Absolutely not.” And I tend to prefer the term “disclosing” as opposed to “coming out,” but that’s just me. “Coming out” is what people know.
But, over the last five or so years, there have been more and more laws that are being passed. Right now, it would be illegal for me to use the men’s bathroom in Florida, which is ridiculous. No one wants me in the women’s restroom and I don’t want to be in the women’s restroom.
In 2019, the Congregation for Catholic Education released a document called "Male and Female He Created Them," which was the first Vatican-level document on what is called “gender ideology.” It’s different from being transgender, but the distinction is generally not made.
That was used as a spur for bishops to start releasing their own gender policies, basically saying “You can’t use people’s preferred names or pronouns,” “People have to use bathrooms according to their biological sex,” et cetera. They got harsher as they went along, with some saying “Trans people cannot be baptized unless they repent, they cannot receive the sacraments.”
I was seeing friends suffering. I was having friends say to me, “I’m considering killing myself,” or making attempts. I was having a lot of cisgender, deeply Catholic friends saying “I’m considering leaving the Church because I feel, by staying by the Church, I’m harming my LGBT friends who I know are people of deep faith and are hurting,” or saying “I just don’t recognize the Church anymore; I don’t believe the Church is living out the gospel of Jesus.”
That was very difficult for me, because I love the Church. I also felt like it was clear that these policies - both civil laws and church policies - were being made without actually talking to transgender people.
There is this sense [in these documents] that the only reason you’re transgender is because you believe that gender has no theological meaning; that it's completely a choice that’s self-made, that it’s just a performance, or that it’s, itself, oppressive and we should just have a gender-neutral society. Because you don’t accept absolute truth or morality and you don’t believe gender is given by God, that’s why you’re trans. And that was not at all true to my experience.
My trans friends were all saying the same thing. Like, we don’t recognize ourselves in these documents.
There’s multiple different experiences that the term [transgender] covers but, in my experience, it’s a medical condition comparable to any other intersex condition. This is where the brain diverges from the rest of the body. And, if it is a medical condition, there’s evidence in the Catholic tradition that it’s something you can treat.
There was a Catholic bioethicist in the seventies, Father Albert Moraczewski, who founded what is now the National Catholic Bioethics Center, who said that if the biological explanation for transsexuality is at all correct, then you could consider it a condition like any other congenital condition, making medical or surgical treatment legitimate.
There is room in the orthodox Catholic anthropological tradition to say, if there’s evidence that this is biological, then there’s no problem with treating it and allowing someone to live as how God made them, according to their internal, God-given gender identity.
Clay
Imagine a trans person of faith, or a trans Catholic, listening to you right now. They might not be sure where they fit in or how to follow a vocation or make use of their gifts. What would you want to say to them?
Christian
Don’t give up. Keep hoping. There is a place for you in the Church. There are people in the Church who accept you and can see you for who you are, who are willing to listen to you.
Those people are in more places than you might think. They tend to be quiet because, if you do speak, you are attacked, but there are places where you can find a home. Listen to the people who say that you are beloved by God. That’s the core message of the Gospel, that you are beloved by God.
So just keep going, because we need your voice. We need you to stay in the church, if you’re able, and show by your witness the good work that God does in trans people. Insofar as you’re able to be open, I encourage you to shine your light and show the fruits of the Spirit in you. But, if you’re not able to be open, I very much understand what that is like.
Keep going, find support where you can. Feel free to reach out to me, I’m findable. Talk to the Jesuits, the Paulists, there’s many communities which will welcome you. Keep going where you find support and don’t give up on your relationship with God.
Clay
How much of the reaction to your disclosure have you seen? Is it bigger or different than you thought it would be?
Christian
It’s quicker and larger than I expected. I actually was expecting more of an immediate negative backlash, but the first 48 hours were very good, very positive.
Backlash is starting to occur. I have looked at Twitter, sadly, in limited amounts. It’s so outrageous it’s amusing.
Two things are frustrating me. One is [people] using my story to attack the church. There are headlines pulling a quote of out of context saying “deal with us,” which is not my tone, making it seem that I’m trying to position myself against the Church, which is not at all true. I’m trying to serve the Church.
There are also folks who just assume I’m mentally ill. Fine. I can’t help them. But there are folks who see this as a sacrilege and assume I have an agenda, which is not true. People can believe that or not, but my only agenda is serving the gospel.
The response which is actually the most powerful, and what I’ve encountered most, is I’ve been getting emails from trans people around the world who have said, “I haven’t had a relationship with the Church for years. I didn’t think I could. I haven’t been welcomed by my family. I haven’t been welcomed by the Church and I’ve given up on having that relationship. But the fact that you have been welcomed by the Church,” - and that speaks to Bishop John’s power as a witness, as a bishop - “the fact that you have been welcomed by the Church gives me hope that I might be able to have a relationship with the Church and with God again. No matter what else happens, you’ve reached this one person."
That’s just a sample of the kind of emails I’ve been getting. Those people are the entirety of what this announcement was for. It’s worth it for those people to feel like it’s possible for them to have a relationship with God.
Clay
I’m also a trans Christian, and a Kentuckian. When I read your story for the first time in that Religion News Service piece, my first thought was: “Wow, a trans hermit,” and then: “Oh my gosh! He’s in the Lexington diocese! That’s my backyard!” Tell me about finding your vocational home here in Kentucky.
Christian
When my friend gave me a list of a few bishops that might be open to me, at the top of the list was Bishop John. I was like, Lexington, Kentucky? I don’t know anything about Kentucky. But Bishop John is an outlier in many ways - he’s so open and courageous.
Before I shared this information more widely, I did privately come out to some folks here in the diocese who tend either slightly or very conservative. I said “I want to share this with you before this comes out.” At first, they were nervous, like “How does this fit with Church teaching?” And I was able to explain my position, that if this is a medical condition, there’s legitimate reasons to consider it morally licit.
I said, "I’m trying to follow how God made me." When I was able to sit down and explain it to them, they already knew me. They knew my committment to God. They didn’t immediately say, “Well, I agree with everything you say”, but they said “I’ve never heard this before; it’s never been presented to me this way; I’m going to have to think about this more,” and they’ve been wonderfully supportive.
One thing that is wonderful about Kentucky, especially up here in the mountains, is that relationships are so important. Your family, your kin, are so important. If you know someone, it’s a lot easier to hear a controversial opinion from them because you already have a relationship with them. You can go, “They’re already part of my community. They’re already part of my family. I’ve got to figure out a way to incorporate them, somehow.”
You’re more likely to listen to them and let them maybe change your mind. That’s one thing I’ve really loved about the folks here in Eastern Kentucky. Unlike my experience in New York, where it can often be depersonalized because there are just so many people, there’s relatively fewer people here and you can have deeper relationships with the people that you keep meeting every day in regular, intimate ways; at the coffee shop, at the grocery store, at church.
I’ve really appreciated the warmth of the people of Eastern Kentucky. I never ever thought of moving here - there was no reason to - but I’m very glad that I’ve found a home here and have started to root myself. It’s beautiful. The people here are good folks.
Clay
Do you think being post-transition allowed you to witness in a way that maybe someone earlier in their transition might not have been able to do as effectively?
Christian
That’s something I’ve talked about with my spiritual director. I have lived my entire adult life as a man. Post-transition, I got a master’s degree from Oxford and a PhD from the University of Saint Andrews. Post-transition, I’ve done my career. Post-transition, I’ve done religious formation and serve the church.
There’s a study from Sweden that a lot of Catholic and secular media like to miscite. They claim it says that transition raises your risk of suicide, that it makes people more unstable - which is not at all what that study showed. The study authors have said it’s been completely misinterpreted. For the vast majority of trans folks, once they transition, it’s like a burden is released and you are more able to interact with people with freedom and love and in healthy ways. You’re less riddled by anxiety and depression - at least, that was my experience, and the experience of others I know.
People blossom and flourish, like going from black-and-white to color. More aspects of their personality are revealed and they’re better able to function in relationships, both professional and personal. Having lived post-transition for almost 20 years, you can kind of see that it’s not the case that transition destroys you. It frees you.
It can be harder to see with someone who’s newly transitioning because you just haven’t time to see the fruits of it yet. Plus, they’re still trying to figure out “what is my relationship with people in my life? Are they going to reject me or not? How do I live, now that I can freely live as a man, or a woman, or a non-binary person, or however I understand myself?”
It’s like a second puberty. You have to figure out how to interact in the world in this new role. There are growing pains that we all have to go through. But being in a stable, centered place 20 years on, it’s easier to see the fruits of transition.
Clay
Is there anything you’ve been wanting to talk about that you wish someone would ask you about, or something that you feel gets missed?
Christian
Yeah. I do wish people would ask me about my theological argument - that, if this is a medical condition, it’s legitimate.
I also want to acknowledge that my experience is not the be-all and end-all of the trans experience. We need to listen to people’s stories. I know that there are a number of trans folks who do not see this as a medical condition, and for whom being trans is a core, essential part of their identity in a way that it’s not for me. I want to affirm that experience and say it’s a different experience to mine.
A person in front of you is finding some truth about themselves and their relationship with God. They’re saying, “This is me, this is who I am, this is how God made me," and I think that’s a very holy experience. Look at the fruits of that. If this is helping the person become a more holy, integrated, open, joyful, peaceful, loving human being, then the Spirit is doing something good there.
There is a diversity and complexity with which God has created the human person. We’ve developed in the past century, in the past 5, 10, 20 years, research that is very new in our understanding of human sexuality. There’s a whole new level of the human person that we are trying to understand and incorporate into our existing theology.
Truth cannot contradict truth. If God has really created the human person this complex, then our theology can incorporate that. We don’t have to be afraid; just watch and explore what God is doing in each individual person’s life.
I think we need to be humble in the face of the work of God.