More Questions on the Dishonesties involved in the Cole Matson Situation

[[Dear Sister, you said something about Brother Christian making profession in a church he was also thumbing his nose at. I wonder if you could say more about that what did you mean? Also though, how is it Brother Christian could live in a monastery for a year and not be known as transgender? Didn't they know about his (her) sex? And if they didn't know about his (her) sex, then how could they not? Why did you want to prescind from the issue of Matson's "transgendered status" in what you wrote to Bishop Stowe? It wasn't as though this was a non-issue, was it?]] 

Thanks for the questions. They are timely because I just read an article on the situation in the National Catholic Register which tended to reignite my anger a bit and exacerbated my sense that there was significant deception involved throughout the process Cole has pursued. It also ties into my comment about making profession in a church in a way that meant he would be living consecrated life in her name while thumbing his nose at her in the same act. You see, profession and especially consecration (which is not a person consecrating themselves to God, but God making a sacred person of the one making perpetual vows), require the candidate be in complete agreement with the Church's theology of consecrated life. 

My Main Concern:

My main concern has been with Cole's dishonest use of canon 603 as a stopgap when he does not have a true vocation as a hermit. But it now seems the dishonesty goes deeper and the impersonation is more extensive. You ask about Cole going to live at a monastery without being known as a transgendered person. He went to the monastery for training so he could learn to begin a community for artists. He calls this his novitiate but since he never intended to stay there and was not preparing to make vows here, it could not have been a novitiate in the way we ordinarily use the term. More importantly, it turns out that Portsmouth Monastery who vetted Cole in all the normal ways including psych testing and physical reports, reported that as far as they were concerned Cole was a biological male!!! Father Brunner wrote: “Per my previous note, every applicant receives a thorough psychological evaluation from a licensed consultant as well as a detailed and extensive background check from a professional firm used by our lawyer. And of course they must present Baptismal and sacramental records, as well as the results of a physical examination attesting to their health. We are confident this would prevent someone entering our Abbey community who was not genuinely male. We’re not going to comment further except to say Dr. Matson went through the full process and was determined to be a biological male.”

How can this be? The only answer can be that Cole tried to deceive the monastery community and succeeded in doing so. Whenever asked his sex (on any form including psych assessments), he must have replied male. Clearly the monastery was acting in good faith and looking for sound healthy male candidates; they asked Cole to go through the same process, not only to protect themselves, but likely because Cole would get a chance to see what is necessary in creating a community. And despite their hospitality and clear needs and intentions in asking Cole to submit to testing and background checks, Cole was dishonest with them about his transgendered status.  One Benedictine monk said that Cole was an honorable man. I agree Cole has been desperate to become a religious, but in light of the way he came into the Portsmouth community and proposed c 603 to Bishop Stowe, I am no longer clear in my own mind about how honest or honorable he is, and that saddens me immeasurably.

What complicates this is that Bishop Stowe said he wanted Cole to get more training and sent him to a monastic house for this. And Bishop Stowe knew Cole was transgendered and genetically female! While I am sure Bishop Stowe allowed Cole to make his own arrangements, I also believe he probably recommended Cole for the stay. Did he do that without mentioning that Coel was a transitioned FtM trans man? I honestly don't know how to feel about all of this.  What about the others that gave Cole such glowing recommendations? Did they also fail to note his transgendered status?

Why did I prescind from the Issue of transsexuality?

But why did I want to prescind from the transgender issue in my letter to Bishop Stowe except for the connection to Cole's using c 603 as a stopgap to achieve justice in the Church? The answer to that is simple, namely, the important issue for me was the appropriate use of canon 603 for vocations that are both authentic and rare!! Bishop Stowe's comments to the media made it sound as though the canon is not used much and needed wider implementation. The fact of the matter is, however, that c 603 is not used often because the vocation it is designed to recognize and govern in the church is a rare one. People rarely come to the fullness of humanity in the silence of solitude. We are social animals and grow to maturity in our relationships with others. Solitary eremitical life (and all eremitical life, really) is an incredibly poorly known or understood vocation and my sense was that what Cole Matson had done in coming out on Pentecost was to ensure that it would never be better understood and also that it would be even less well appreciated than it has come to be in its 41 years of life in the Church. 

When I wrote Bishop Stowe I pretty much assumed he, like many bishops, did not understand solitary eremitical life or its importance for the faithful. I did not want to do much more than to educate him a bit on what the canon established in law and why that was critically important to the Church's efforts to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world. I wanted Bishop Stowe to gain a sense of the charism of the solitary hermit vocation and thus too, to be able to educate others on all of this. Though this was not uppermost in my mind, I also thought it could be that if Cole were led to embrace this (or at least a non-canonical eremitical) vocation honestly, he might come to the degree of inner healing and maturity he really needed to achieve. I said as much to Bishop Stowe in my first letter. 

However, Cole's healing and the impossibility of that occurring if he was allowed to lie his way to profession, were definitely on my mind. Cole was proposing to embrace eremitical life in order to get professed and I knew that eremitical life could lead to immense healing if Cole really did as he proposed to do, that is, really embraced eremitical life itself. Unfortunately, I did not realize he would mainly be praying in the mornings and then spending both the afternoon and evening at the theatre working. Nor did I realize that Bishop Stowe would be allowing this non-eremitical approach to things. My focus here was as it needed to be because even in the USCCB announcements, the Bishops seemed to be focusing on the transgender issue, not on the authentic use of c 603.  

That's about all I have for now. Please get back to me if you have additional questions!