The Right to a Rite

by Andrew Blair

(The Gender Centre advise that this article may not be current and as such certain content, including but not limited to persons, contact details and dates may not apply. Where legal authority or medical related matters are cited, responsibility lies with the reader to obtain the most current relevant legal authority and/or medical publication.)

I am Br. Andrew Blair, an Ecumenical Franciscan Religious and a fellow transperson, I am writing to you about our rights as transpeople to practice our faith in freedom and further to that, our right to act upon God's calling us to minister to our neighbours.

I entered into transition at the beginning of 1998 and at that time, I was a practising Christian and a Catholic. It has always been my belief that there must be the same ratio of transpeople who are Christians as there are anyone else and that makes it about 30% - 40% of us. Unfortunately, however being Christian makes our transitioning a harder road because of the extra discrimination we face when we remain in the mainstream denominations. It is further my belief that transpeople should have the right to worship and serve God freely, as they choose and are called so to do.

The Metropolitan Community Churches, in Parramatta and Petersham grant this right to transsexual and other rainbow Community believers, as they do to women in general. There is now, also another denomination, which grants full rights to worship and service to all people, and this is the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Australia.

For those of you, who like me are Catholic, this Church offers the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church within the framework of the Roman Rite. The priests of this Church are validly ordained, though our orders are irregular simply because our founder did not have Rome's permission to do so.

We are Ecumenical in that we believe "that all who believe in Christ are our brothers and sisters, and as our brothers and sisters, are entitled to stand with us at Our Lords table." I am quoting here from Bishop Ronald Langham's Homily from the first Sunday of Lent just past. Bishop Ronald is the Bishop Primus of our Church.

This coming July 4th Bishop Ronald will Ordain me to the diaconate in this new Catholic Church - I am not sure but possibly I am the first transman to be ordained deacon anywhere. Until that time, I continue to work with Fr. Peter Johnson in what we have come to call the Gathering at 320 Riley Street Surry Hills. This Community is extremely transgender friendly being already 50% transgender.

The Gathering forms a small part of what is the Inner City parish of Ss.. John the Beloved and Mary Magdalene.

On behalf of the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Australia, Fr. Peter Johnson and I would like to invite those of you who share our Catholic Faith, as well as others of Protestant or Orthodox faith to an inquiry day or evening to be held at the Gender Centre.

On that day or evening, Fr. Peter and I will present information about our Church so that you may see whether the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Australia might be the place where you can continue your spiritual transition to womanhood or manhood.

On another issue now: How many of you as transmen or women have made the rite of passage to womanhood or manhood? Indeed what might this mean for those of us who are transpeople? (Br. John ­Francis Efo, one of my Brothers in Francis, suggested the idea. John-Francis and I will be making our Simple Professions later this year).

Much later in this year the Ecca would like to facilitate an evening or day when we workshop a ceremony for the Rites of Passage into manhood or womanhood and then conduct this ceremony.

To do this we need the expertise of a transgender woman who is a spiritual person, who will workshop the ceremony preparations with me, and will concelebrate the Rite with me. If we do this after 4 July I shall be Deacon by then.

We intend this to be a thoroughly Ecumenical Rite of Passage and so any and all are welcome to attend and to input their various spiritualities into the preparation so that the Rite Created will be a true expression of our psycho spiritual Natures as transpeople.

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