Transgender Woman Prepares To Enter Carmelite Convent

[truthfinder]

Yes, I've heard of that too from Nonnberg Abbey at Salzburg. Carthusian nuns have it always (?).

They, Carthusians, historically did - because they would also get a stole.  But I'm not sure if they do anymore.

[Feankie]

Not really knowing about this as much as the rest of you, I toss out a questions. In reading the long article on the link, it says she is preparing to join the Third Order Carmelites, not go into a convent, hoping to enter the convent some day. Am I reading this wrong?! Not to cause a firestorm here,just pop in and read the article with the description of the book she wrote. Hmmmm...

Edited July 28, 2014 by Francis Clare

[Kayte Postle]

Not really knowing about this as much as the rest of you, I toss out a questions. In reading the long article on the link, it says she is preparing to join the Third Order Carmelites, not go into a convent, hoping to enter the convent some day. Am I reading this wrong?! Not to cause a firestorm here,just pop in and read the article with the description of the book she wrote. Hmmmm...

 

I've been a bit curious about this a well. After reading the original link again and the first article that Vee8 posted I have a few questions. The article vee posted was worded in a way that made it sound that she is not a CV recognized by her  Bishop, but rather one day just starting wearing a veil and calling herself a CV. Then again media tends to get things grossly wrong, so I hate to make any kind of assumption.
 

Either way I'll continue to pray for her.

[domenica_therese]

The term in use nowadays is "intersex" . Prior to ultrasound and DNA testing, it was often very hard to discover the actual gender, based solely on the appearance of the external genitalia. Many children were wrongly assigned as males, possibly because parents wanted to have a son more.

Transgender, properly, is something else again. In this situation, the person's sexual identity, based on physical evidence and function, is clear, but the person has an overwhelming feeling that he or she is "trapped in the wrong body". They are the ones who want gender-reassignment and usually drastic surgery. IMO, the transgender phenomenon is a mental issue; ambiguous sexuality because of intersex problems is a physical one.

 

 I looked into this story a bit last night because I was curious about whether the media was spinning it to use her story to promote their agenda. I was also curious about the back-story behind the word "transgender" in relation to her because of what Antigonos described above. I wasn't sure what her traditional, physical gender-assignment would have been. If, instead of being intersex, she had clearly been biologically male, and decided to switch to being female, I think that would be canonically problematic. On the other hand, if someone were living as a man, but decided to revert to their God-given gender, and then join a convent as a part of that, that would be a step in a process of healing that I think the Church would definitely support.

 

But if what seems to be her twitter account really is her twitter account, she's been reposting the articles, and she seems to be willing for her story to be the symbol it seems to be for some. Some things about her book, her youtube account, and on her website raise some red flags.

 

 

This is from the description of her book on Amazon (so I'm assuming she wrote or approved this):

 

 

 

Recently, she walked into a Roman Catholic church just before mass dressed as a woman, wearing the veil of the consecrated maiden, and approached the priest with the statement, "I have assembled a rock-solid argument in favour of homosexuality" The positive response she received alone shows that there is hope.

 

The internet remembers everything, so it's hard to say what the current state of her heart is, I would just be cautious about endorsing her.

 

 

[Perigrina]

But if what seems to be her twitter account really is her twitter account, she's been reposting the articles, and she seems to be willing for her story to be the symbol it seems to be for some. Some things about her book, her youtube account, and on her website raise some red flags.

 

 

If this is really the case, it seems unlikely that she will end up being accepted at a Carmel.  Perhaps we can pray that the process works as it should.

[domenica_therese]

If this is really the case, it seems unlikely that she will end up being accepted at a Carmel.  Perhaps we can pray that the process works as it should.

 

:like:

 

Best prayer for all situations. 

[Feankie]

This article is directly coped from the link for IF Press as shown in a previous post. Here goes.....

London, ON. Consecrated maiden Tia Michelle Pesando, a hermaphrodite in the process of becoming a Carmelite sister (and eventually a nun) has released a book pointing out common fallacies regarding Biblical understanding and offering encouragement to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community. Titled Why God Doesn't Hate You, the book also reveals elements of her own journey and the story behind her recent suggestion to the Vatican that the Church reinstate a form of same-sex union which it apparently practiced in the Middle Ages.
Tia was assigned the male gender marker since birth (like most classical hermaphrodites), and videos documenting her transition have been viewed by millions. At priestly recommendation she is currently undergoing the procedure to join the Carmelite Third Order; her plan is to remain in this order while she is at home helping to take care of her parents, and then perhaps become a fully-fledged Second Order cloistered Carmelite nun. She has done years of research into some of the most controversial issues facing Christianity and participated in the Vatican's recent Synod on the Family.
Though Tia Michelle is a Roman Catholic, her message is for all denominations of Christianity. Anglican Dean of Theology William J. Danaher Jr. has even stated that "This book will change the world."

[Clare Brigid]

If this woman has an intersex condition, it is certainly inappropriate to characterize her as transgender or transsexual.

 

It may actually have been Cardinal Raymond Burke who received the first transsexual religious sister, when he was bishop of Latrobe, WI.  I explained here in a post last year:  http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/topic/129565-trandgender-navy-seal/?p=2592879

 

We don't have all the facts about the situation or why Cardinal Burke acted as he did, so I do not think it would be correct to draw any conclusions from it for the moral permissibility of transitioning.  It was evidently important to him, for instance, that Sr. Julie Green (formerly Joel Green) no longer approved of surgical sex reassignment.

[Perigrina]

This article is directly coped from the link for IF Press as shown in a previous post. Here goes.....

London, ON. Consecrated maiden Tia Michelle Pesando, a hermaphrodite in the process of becoming a Carmelite sister (and eventually a nun) has released a book pointing out common fallacies regarding Biblical understanding and offering encouragement to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community. Titled Why God Doesn't Hate You, the book also reveals elements of her own journey and the story behind her recent suggestion to the Vatican that the Church reinstate a form of same-sex union which it apparently practiced in the Middle Ages.
Tia was assigned the male gender marker since birth (like most classical hermaphrodites), and videos documenting her transition have been viewed by millions. At priestly recommendation she is currently undergoing the procedure to join the Carmelite Third Order; her plan is to remain in this order while she is at home helping to take care of her parents, and then perhaps become a fully-fledged Second Order cloistered Carmelite nun. She has done years of research into some of the most controversial issues facing Christianity and participated in the Vatican's recent Synod on the Family.
Though Tia Michelle is a Roman Catholic, her message is for all denominations of Christianity. Anglican Dean of Theology William J. Danaher Jr. has even stated that "This book will change the world."

 

The scholarship supporting the idea that there was a form of same sex union in the Middle Ages is highly questionable.  It sounds like her research is more agenda driven than truth driven.  

[Benedictus]

The scholarship supporting the idea that there was a form of same sex union in the Middle Ages is highly questionable.  It sounds like her research is more agenda driven than truth driven.  

 

Have you looked into it? There are also claims the church had women deacons.

[Benedictus]

In terms of someone being intersex -  I can't see why this would be some sort of bar to religious life. In terms of transexuals -  I can see why some communities may struggle but this probably doesn't mean it's impossible either. There was a transexual, male to female, that was discerning with a new religious order in my country. This individual used to attend the same city discernment group as me.The three or four sisters of her community knew the situation and they weren't hostile. Although they wanted to be a mixed community from the offset, so i don't know if this impacted their thinking or not. Either way they were beautiful sisters. There are also now more Catholic communities that have men and women living in the same complex, so it's probably not so much of a big deal.

[Perigrina]

Have you looked into it? There are also claims the church had women deacons.

 

I have read material debunking Boswell's claims about  medieval same sex unions.  Here is a representative review:

 

Boswell's style, here as in Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, is to pack an enormous amount of dry, irrelevant bibliographic material into scores of footnotes, building a pretentious barricade around his thin and vacillating central presentation. Meanwhile, crucial research is often avoided. For example, one would expect a historian discussing medieval sexuality to at least cursorily consider the enormous "courtly love" tradition, with its inherent perversities, but that is relegated to a footnote, which glibly lists, without explanation, 23 books and articles for us to read. Boswell's knowledge of psychology or general sexual history seems minimal, confined to a handful of chic, narrow academic books cited from the 1980s.

Whatever medieval ceremonies of union he may have found, Boswell has not remotely established that they were originally homosexual in our romantic sense. Their real meaning has yet to be determined. Sacrilegious misuse of such ceremonies may indeed have occurred, leading to their banning, but historians are unjustified in extrapolating backwards and reducing fragmentary evidence to its lowest common denominator. The cause of gay rights, which I support, is not helped by this kind of slippery, self-interested scholarship, where propaganda and casuistry impede the objective search for truth.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/pwh/bosrev-paglia.asp

 

 

Deacon comes from a Greek word that means servant.  There were women who served in the early Church, for example, helping with the baptisms of women (which involved nudity) but there is no evidence at all that there was an ordained position for women comparable to the male diaconate.

[marigold]

Out of props but you're absolutely right on the deacon thing, Perigrina.

[Benedictus]

Deacon comes from a Greek word that means servant.  There were women who served in the early Church, for example, helping with the baptisms of women (which involved nudity) but there is no evidence at all that there was an ordained position for women comparable to the male diaconate.

Ah interesting. Something I'll probably read more into at some point.

[Antigonos]

In terms of someone being intersex -  I can't see why this would be some sort of bar to religious life. In terms of transexuals -  I can see why some communities may struggle but this probably doesn't mean it's impossible either. There was a transexual, male to female, that was discerning with a new religious order in my country. This individual used to attend the same city discernment group as me.The three or four sisters of her community knew the situation and they weren't hostile. Although they wanted to be a mixed community from the offset, so i don't know if this impacted their thinking or not. Either way they were beautiful sisters. There are also now more Catholic communities that have men and women living in the same complex, so it's probably not so much of a big deal.

 

I can see where being transgender would have problems for a community in that transsexuals need to take hormone therapy for the rest of their lives, after the surgery.  That would be a considerable expense for any community to underwrite.