There is no such thing as an “LGBTQ Catholic,” or a “transgender Catholic,” or a “heterosexual Catholic,” as if our sexual appetites defined who we are; as if these designations described discrete communities of differing but equal integrity within the real ecclesial community, the body of Jesus Christ.

This binary classification of sexual identity would impact nearly 1.4 million Americans who do not identify with the gender indicated on their birth certificates, prompting transgender and gender-queer persons (and those who stand with them) to characterize the proposal as transphobic and anti-LGBTQ+.

For as long as I could remember, since about the age of 3 or 4, I knew that I was different. As a child, for years I would go to bed praying that I would wake up as a girl. This is a story commonly echoed by many transgender people like myself.

I was, and still am, very confident in my relationship with my God. I knew I would be the same person walking out of the confessional as walking in, no matter what some might say or claim about me.

The Honorable Harvest is a covenant of reciprocity between humans and the land

When we speak of the living world as kin, we also are called to act in new ways

We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth; soit is easy for us to cut or singe a slender thread that any thing hangs by; thus easyis it for God when he pleases to cast his enemies down to hell.

Yea, God is a great dealmore angry with great numbers that are now on earth

a gift economy functions through an ethic of reciprocity and interconnection.

Gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly renewable resource.

By encouraging openness between the Church and the scientific communities,

“Our Knowledge of God and Nature: Physics, Philosophy and Theology”, is assuredly a crucial one for the contemporary world.

Do not hesitate to give, nor complain when you give;

If someone strikes your right cheek, turn to him the other also, and you shall be perfect. If someone impresses you for one mile, go with him two. If someone takes your cloak, give him also your coat. If someone takes from you what is yours, ask it not back, for indeed you are not able. Give to every one who asks you, and ask it not back; for the Father wills that to all should be given of our own blessings (free gifts).

Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn’t yet been part of you graduates’ actual life routine, day after week after month after year.

The story thing turns out to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but if you’re worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don’t be. I am not the wise old fish