Editor’s Note: Our guest contributor this week, Hilary Howes, is a friend and neighbor in Greenbelt. We worship together at our local small intentional Catholic community. She is a Transgender person and LGBTQ community activist. She is the founder of TransCatholic, a Roman Catholic apostolate to support the dignity and inclusion of transgender laity. Hilary shares her story of owning her sexual identity and how her faith as a practicing Catholic supports her life and work. Join me in recognizing and celebrating Pride Month through her powerful story. I'm over 70 now—a woman for more than 30 years, a Catholic for over 20, and married to a Catholic woman for nearly 50. I've had time to reflect, to pray, and I've been given more gifts of faith than I ever expected. I came to religion with no childhood training at all. As a queer Catholic, that absence was a quiet blessing. When we're young, we're taught the world is black and white. It's only with age that we discover the countless shades hiding in between. Gender, sex, orientation, faith—these aren't binaries. They're a spectrum, richer and stranger than anything school or church ever offered us. That early instruction wasn't neutral; it was built to enforce a cisgender, heteronormative, patriarchal order. Obedience came first; questions came never. But faith, real faith, demands the opposite: it demands that we interrogate everything, especially the assumptions we were never allowed to touch. My father was a sober alcoholic, devoted to AA. My mother stood beside him in Al-Anon. The closest thing I had to religious instruction was the Serenity Prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." I didn't know then how Catholic that prayer truly was. It has shaped me ever since. Here is something the world needs to hear amid this so-called "Culture War" over gender: transgender people are not new. We are not a trend, not an invention of modern politics. We have always existed—in families, in faith communities, across every era of human history. Look to societies the West dismisses as "primitive" and you'll find us, undisguised. Look to the animal kingdom and you'll find cross-gender behavior threaded through nature itself. Science, medicine, anthropology, biology—they all converge on the same staggering possibility: that transgender people are not a deviation from God's design, but a part of it. The Roman Catholic Church has never officially ruled otherwise. The only thing standing in the way of our welcome is not doctrine—it is patriarchy, plain and unadorned. I am one of the rare few of my generation who can say this: my transgender womanhood was embraced—fully, unflinchingly—by my father, my mother, my brothers, my wife, and my daughter. That affirmation, echoed by friends, customers, employers, fellow worshippers, nuns, priests, and even a bishop or two, has been nothing short of sacred to me. Discovering that the gender you were assigned at birth was never truly yours is a spiritual reckoning—a journey toward wholeness, toward becoming who you actually are. Perhaps every soul is on some version of that journey. But to walk it with an incongruent gender, in what I believe history will remember as the death throes of the patriarchy, is to walk through shame, guilt, anguish, and public humiliation—armed only with resilience and an endless, exhausting rotation of courage, wisdom, and serenity. I transitioned openly in 1995, and the world handed me a fight I hadn't asked for: advocacy for transgender rights, first in my city, then my state, then the halls of federal and international law. In 2003, I was baptized Catholic—and that, too, became a calling. I found myself writing, speaking, building websites, creating media, all in defense of the dignity of transgender Catholics. Along the way, I crossed paths with brilliant theologians, fierce and compassionate counselors, and people of such quiet kindness that my faith deepened and my soul, again and again, was refilled. My wife and I belong to a Roman Catholic Intentional Eucharistic Community now, and we never miss a week. Our daughter attended a regular parish with us back then, through CCD, through Mass after Mass—but the Church's sexual abuse scandals drove her away, and at over 40, I doubt she'll ever return. She asks me, sometimes, how I can still find anything worth keeping in a religion she sees as patriarchal, hypocritical, hostile to people like me. My answer is this: it is the people. It is the timeless power of the readings, the rituals, the call to something larger than the failures of the institution. Jesus did not ask his Church to be perfect—he asked it to be better. I consider it my honor to keep asking the same. My fellow congregants are gay priests, published theologians, welcoming nuns, LGBTQ+ activists, immigration lawyers, trans women, autistic men, divorced women, scientists, deaf laity—an entire mosaic of the overlooked and underestimated, gathered every week to witness the same miracle: the Eucharist. And believe me, there have been seasons of my life when I needed a miracle desperately. Celebrating it among people who believe as fiercely as I do—that is healing. I remember once agreeing to an interview with a reporter from a conservative Catholic paper. I knew exactly what I was walking into. I went anyway. And she asked me the single best question anyone has ever put to me: "Why do you believe that God made you transgender?" My answer, in the moment, was flippant: "I needed a male body so I could make a child with the woman I love." Unsurprisingly, it never made the final cut. But it stayed with me for days, turning over and over in my mind. What was she really asking? How could you possibly believe God made you this way? Or maybe: Why would God make transgender people at all? Or even sharper: Why would God make you? My answer, the one I've settled into, is this: God loves diversity. God built a reproductive system so wildly intricate—sex and gender determined at different moments in development—that incongruence was never an anomaly. It was inevitable, for some small fraction of us. Does God have a plan for me specifically? I don't know. To claim certainty about the mind of God is the height of human arrogance. Maybe I'm not part of some grand design at all. Maybe I'm simply living proof that God has a sense of humor. For more on this and related topics, visit Hilary’s website at TransCatholic.org and New Ways Ministry.

Date Published
June 30th, 2026
Topics
- Racial Equity & Justice

Hilary Howes

Editor’s Note: Our guest contributor this week, Hilary Howes, is a friend and neighbor in Greenbelt. We worship together at our local small intentional Catholic community. She is a Transgender person and LGBTQ community activist. She is the founder of TransCatholic, a Roman Catholic apostolate to support the dignity and inclusion of transgender laity. Hilary shares her story of owning her sexual identity and how her faith as a practicing Catholic supports her life and work. Join me in recognizing and celebrating Pride Month through her powerful story.

I’m over 70 now—a woman for more than 30 years, a Catholic for over 20, and married to a Catholic woman for nearly 50. I’ve had time to reflect, to pray, and I’ve been given more gifts of faith than I ever expected. I came to religion with no childhood training at all. As a queer Catholic, that absence was a quiet blessing.

When we’re young, we’re taught the world is black and white. It’s only with age that we discover the countless shades hiding in between. Gender, sex, orientation, faith—these aren’t binaries. They’re a spectrum, richer and stranger than anything school or church ever offered us. That early instruction wasn’t neutral; it was built to enforce a cisgender, heteronormative, patriarchal order. Obedience came first; questions came never. But faith, real faith, demands the opposite: it demands that we interrogate everything, especially the assumptions we were never allowed to touch.

My father was a sober alcoholic, devoted to AA. My mother stood beside him in Al-Anon. The closest thing I had to religious instruction was the Serenity Prayer:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

I didn’t know then how Catholic that prayer truly was. It has shaped me ever since.

Here is something the world needs to hear amid this so-called “Culture War” over gender: transgender people are not new. We are not a trend, not an invention of modern politics. We have always existed—in families, in faith communities, across every era of human history. Look to societies the West dismisses as “primitive,” and you’ll find us, undisguised. Look to the animal kingdom, and you’ll find cross-gender behavior threaded through nature itself. Science, medicine, anthropology, biology—they all converge on the same staggering possibility: that transgender people are not a deviation from God’s design, but a part of it. The Roman Catholic Church has never officially ruled otherwise. The only thing standing in the way of our welcome is not doctrine—it is patriarchy, plain and unadorned.

I am one of the rare few of my generation who can say this: my transgender womanhood was embraced—fully, unflinchingly—by my father, my mother, my brothers, my wife, and my daughter. That affirmation, echoed by friends, customers, employers, fellow worshippers, nuns, priests, and even a bishop or two, has been nothing short of sacred to me.

Discovering that the gender you were assigned at birth was never truly yours is a spiritual reckoning—a journey toward wholeness, toward becoming who you actually are. Perhaps every soul is on some version of that journey. But to walk it with an incongruent gender, in what I believe history will remember as the death throes of the patriarchy, is to walk through shame, guilt, anguish, and public humiliation—armed only with resilience and an endless, exhausting rotation of courage, wisdom, and serenity.

I transitioned openly in 1995, and the world handed me a fight I hadn’t asked for: advocacy for transgender rights, first in my city, then my state, then the halls of federal and international law. In 2003, I was baptized Catholic—and that, too, became a calling. I found myself writing, speaking, building websites, creating media, all in defense of the dignity of transgender Catholics. Along the way, I crossed paths with brilliant theologians, fierce and compassionate counselors, and people of such quiet kindness that my faith deepened and my soul, again and again, was refilled.

My wife and I belong to a Roman Catholic Intentional Eucharistic Community now, and we never miss a week. Our daughter attended a regular parish with us back then, through CCD, through Mass after Mass—but the Church’s sexual abuse scandals drove her away, and at over 40, I doubt she’ll ever return. She asks me, sometimes, how I can still find anything worth keeping in a religion she sees as patriarchal, hypocritical, hostile to people like me.

My answer is this: it is the people. It is the timeless power of the readings, the rituals, the call to something larger than the failures of the institution. Jesus did not ask his Church to be perfect—he asked it to be better. I consider it my honor to keep asking the same. My fellow congregants are gay priests, published theologians, welcoming nuns, LGBTQ+ activists, immigration lawyers, trans women, autistic men, divorced women, scientists, deaf laity—an entire mosaic of the overlooked and underestimated, gathered every week to witness the same miracle: the Eucharist. And believe me, there have been seasons of my life when I needed a miracle desperately. Celebrating it among people who believe as fiercely as I do—that is healing.

I remember once agreeing to an interview with a reporter from a conservative Catholic paper. I knew exactly what I was walking into. I went anyway. And she asked me the single best question anyone has ever put to me: “Why do you believe that God made you transgender?”

My answer, in the moment, was flippant: “I needed a male body so I could make a child with the woman I love.” Unsurprisingly, it never made the final cut. But it stayed with me for days, turning over and over in my mind. What was she really asking? How could you possibly believe God made you this way? Or maybe: Why would God make transgender people at all? Or even sharper: Why would God make you?

My answer, the one I’ve settled into, is this: God loves diversity. God built a reproductive system so wildly intricate—sex and gender determined at different moments in development—that incongruence was never an anomaly. It was inevitable, for some small fraction of us. Does God have a plan for me specifically? I don’t know. To claim certainty about the mind of God is the height of human arrogance. Maybe I’m not part of some grand design at all. Maybe I’m simply living proof that God has a sense of humor.

For more on this and related topics, visit Hilary’s website at TransCatholic.org and New Ways Ministry.