>> Julia: Welcome to Things I Wish I Knew, the podcast from

Thinking Faith, a work of the Jesuits in Britain.

I'm Julia. I'm in my early 30s and I used to live

in a Jesuit young adult community. We all live

hectic lives and often don't get time to reflect

on what's happening both to us and around us. This

podcast is meant to help you to take a moment to

stop and think about where you are, where you're

going and where your relationship with God fits

into it all. Every week I meet a new guest who

takes tells me about something they experienced

which changed their life forever. By talking about

the things they wish they'd known, we'll explore

the idea that God is in all things. And we'll talk

about the part that faith plays in navigating

life's challenges.

Today I'm speaking to Nicky, a Catholic theologian

who works at the London Jesuit Centre. Nicky is

talking about her experience of trans inclusion in

the Church, both personally as a trans woman and,

as an academic. This conversation is a reminder of

the importance of church being a place of

community. So, Nicky, can you share a bit about

your journey and what brought you into this work?

>> Nicky: Yeah. So, I stumbled into studying theology almost

entirely by accident. I was originally applying to

study philosophy, psychology and physiology at

Oxford. And like many people who applied to get

into Oxford, I didn't manage to do it. And I

realised the kind of day before I had to send off

the personal statement that the course was being

pulled. And the thing which required the least

changes to my personal statement was philosophy

and theology. And I'd done a bit of like,

philosophy of religion when studying in college,

so I swapped to that and then I just fell in love

with the subject. And over the years I grew more

and more entranced with Christianity and I ended

up converting when I was a PhD student, then

really deep into theology and doing PhD study. I

guess the weird thing about that journey is that

before I converted to Christianity, I also came

out as trans. Like I'm a trans woman. And my

conversion was very much bound up in the kind of

process of exploration that comes with

transitioning. So I was doing these two kind of

projects of exploration at the same time, one

about transness and one much more formal project

with a PhD at the end about theology. And the two

ended up inflecting one another, as, these things

always do when you're doing PhD study. And after

finishing my PhD, which was on Pope Francis, I

realised that I wanted to actually focus on

researching trans stuff and using the lessons I

learned from Pope Francis to think about those

things. So that's kind of how I end up where I am

now.

>> Julia: And what has been your experience as a trans woman

in the church?

>> Nicky: So it's been an ambivalent one, I think, in many

respects. Actually, Catholicism's been really

hospitable to me. I think I'm in a weird position

of coming to it as an adult convert. So without

bad prior experiences or at least direct

experiences of Catholicism to put me off, I

converted in the context of the University of

Durham's theology, and Religion department, which

is a very warm and nurturing and hospitable place.

And I came to Catholicism having already got a,

master's in Catholic Studies and was studying a

PhD in theology. So religion has always been

something. Or Catholicism, in fact, has always

been something that's been quite empowering to me.

And I realised that that's definitely not the case

for most kind of trans people. And then I came to

work here at the Jesit Centre and I'm involved in

the Farm Street community, which is also very

friendly, nurturing and things like that. So I've

kind of came into the church within a niche and

then moved into another niche which has always

been relatively comfortable. But that's obviously

not the experience for everybody. And, you know,

I've had a couple of bad experiences or whatever,

but for the most part my experience has actually

been pretty good.

>> Julia: It sounds like you've had opportunities to

flourish in the church, but what, from your

research, what do trans people need in order to

flourish in the church?

>> Nicky: Right. So I think actually the successes of my

stories are, Well, firstly, it's a sign of what

trans people need. Like, I wouldn't have been able

to persist with being a Catholic had I not had

those things. So one of the things that's really

brought home to me is the importance of things

like community and having a place. Catholicism, it

talks about the fact that the church is a

communion. And one of the things that that means

is that your spiritual life is lived out in

community and it's enriched by the people around

you who, you know, you share in the. You Eucharist

with and stuff you're bonded to in a very kind of,

primordial and intimate way. So that's pretty

important. And my experience of meeting trans

Christians and queer Christians in general is that

their ability to be Christians is generally very

dependent on their ability to have a place in a

Christian community that might not be a

particularly straightforward place. It might not

be the most comfortable place in the world, but

people find, like, a livable niche within whatever

church they belong to. On the other hand, this is

not an entirely straightforward thing. Right? I

mean, I'm sure all of you listeners can think of

many different kinds of things that might be

obstacles to trans people joining and to an

extent, like, you almost don't need to talk about

them. Everyone knows you mustn't be discriminated

against, you mustn't be kicked out of your

community. You've got to have a chance to live

your faith without thinking about how being queer

is an obstacle to it. You've got to be able to

live your faith without being consumed by doubts

and guilts and uncertainties and have the mental

space to kind of focus on the positive things like

your love for God, your love for the people around

you, your sense of God's love for you, that sort

of thing. What interests me about this is the

slightly less obvious stuff. So many of these

things, there are lots of questions attached to

them. So what does it mean to have a community

that doesn't discriminate against you? What does

it mean to have a place in a community that's

comfortable? What does it mean for the Church to

be able to think about you in a way that enables

it to provide these things? and that's really what

I kind of focus on in my work.

>> Julia: So what do people often misunderstand about trans

identity?

>> Nicky: Right. So I think in Catholicism at least, the

main kind of problematic misunderstanding, the

thing which I think really shapes the challenge

that trans. Trans people face in the Church is the

fact that the Church views transness, is that it

does so on the basis of a very long history of

reacting against things that it sees as a threat,

things to do with the modern world that it

interprets in a very specific way. So if you go

back to the 19th century, you'll find in popes

like Leo XIII, they see the modern world as

characterised by what they call as licence. So

this is a view of human freedom as not being

towards God or towards the order that God creates

the world to conform to. And you can see this view

present in the way that the Church thinks about

transness today as well. So if you look at the

recent document from 2024 that came from what's

known as the dicastery of the doctrine of the

faith. That's the bill of Vatican that decides

doctrinal issues, resolves doctrinal disputes. It

views transness as a matter of people wanting to

take the body that God has given Them take how

their body is ordered, like physically organised,

and they want to exercise their freedom over their

bodies, changing their bodies without regard to

the kind of order that God created in the world.

It's fundamentally the same sort of narrative.

And, it reduces transness to people just wanting

to exercise their freedom or exercise their power

over their body, over nature. But this misses

something really important about the way that

trans people experience being trans and also even

about the way that people think about transness. I

don't think I've ever met a trans person who just

sees their transitioning as a matter of them

thinking their body is just some thing that they

can do whatever they want with, just sees it as

like an arbitrary exercise of their will or

indulging of their arbitrary desires. Often people

experience transness as an encounter with

something transcendent of them, something deep and

true and powerful. This is certainly the case for

me, and this is in fact one of the reasons why my

discovery of an exploration of Catholicism could

happen alongside my discovery and exploration of

transness. In a certain sense, they felt like the

same sort of thing. And also then when you look at

the way that people talk about transness in trans

studies, again, this theme of some sort of

transcendence keeps kind of cropping up. This

might not be a straightforward idea that there's

something divine or like godlike that's being

encountered in transness, but often people talk

about there being a kind of mysterious nature

which defies our ability to capture it in the

language of sex and gender that society provides

us with. And they see transness as this nature

kind of pushing past those boundaries and creating

forms of life that then can't be recognised by the

society that's shaped by these ideas of sex and

gender. So based on this kind of interpretation,

the Church is then not really able to think

through transness in a way that does justice to

the way that trans people themselves are thinking

about transness. And, this is a problem because,

firstly, the whole approach is a very conflictual

one. It approaches transness as the newest face of

this great enemy that's threatened the church

since the 19th century and before. But on the

other hand, it also means that the Church fails to

recognise points of contact between Catholicism

and, how trans people experience their lives. This

is a pastoral problem, right M. It's a pastoral

problem for theologians. Theologians and Church

leaders need to learn to step out of this fearful

and reactive and defensive mindset and, enable

themselves to become open to the sorts of good

surprises that are presented in things that might

seem strange and might even seem threatening, but

then also have these hidden dimensions that can be

genuinely fulfilling and genuinely hopeful. And

that's kind of what I'm all about as a theologian.

>> Julia: So what do you mean by transcendence?

>> Nicky: Right, so this is like a theology word.

theologians talk about two kind of opposing

principles, or not opposing principles, but sort

of like opposite principles. There's immanence and

transcendence. Immanence is what's kind of

internal to human experience or human knowledge,

or perhaps creation. All the stuff that makes up

the everyday world around us makes up parts of

human life. And then transcendence is the stuff

that is in excess of or beyond or greater than or

above this. So God, Grace, those sorts of things

are all transcendent. So a major feature of

Catholicism is the idea that transcendence can be

encountered within immanence. So the sacraments

are worldly things, you know, little biscuits and

bits, of wine or worldly rituals and, elements and

words and things like that, all of which are, ah,

sites of encounter with the transcendent. So

transcendence is incredibly important to

Catholicism. and, you know, central to that is

that human life is fundamentally about and shaped

by and even created for an encounter with

transcendence kind of within our immanence. And

this, I think, is what's important then about

thinking about transness. Trans people do not

account for their encounter with transcendence in

terms that might immediately be recognisable to

your everyday Catholic, your everyday church

leader. They won't necessarily talk about God or

the divine or grace or anything like that, but

they might still talk about the idea that the

world defies reduction to the everyday terms

around sex and gender that we think with. They

might talk about a certain mysteriousness that the

world has, our human inability to fully grasp the

world, our ability to continuously be surprised by

the world, or for the world to resist our best

attempts to lock it down to something within our

power. So there's something there which might be

equivalent to transcendence in the sense that it's

talking about, the world. What Catholics might say

is creation is having a past that refuses to be

reduced to what we'd normally think of in terms of

imminence, human reason, human power, that sort of

thing.

>> Julia: So you spoke before about Pope Leo XIII's, view on

people and society, but how has the Church's

approach to trans people changed over time? Is it

different to that view now, how many years later?

>> Nicky: Yeah, sure. So, I mean, Leo wasn't really thinking

about trans People, or even queer people in

general. There's a long and complicated history of

what gets called queerness or like trans stuff or

whatever. in, you know, Western history even,

there are various social phenomena that have come

about that resemble what we would know as like,

gay life or trans life or whatever today. But the

way in which we think about transness now is very

much shaped by 20th century medicine. Basically

the kinds of ideas of transness that you probably

have now. So transness as a medical problem,

transness is about a mismatch m between how

someone thinks or feels about themselves and the

way that their body is. Transness involving

accessing certain kinds of medical treatments, all

of these sorts of ways of thinking about

transness. What's known as like, the medical model

of transness came about in this time and it was

during this time then that the church began to

think about transness as well. so the first kind

of reflections on transness were to do with

bioethical questions. Is gender change surgeries

or whatever morally licit? As moral theologians

would say, are you allowed to do it? Is it moral

to do it? Also questions about whether people

who've changed gender or changed sex or whatever

could play like sex restricted roles in the

church. So could, female, ah, to male transsexual,

which is the language that people were using at

the time. People don't really use that word

anymore. People were asking whether a female to

male transsexual could be a priest or whether

trans people who'd had gender change surgery could

get married and what roles they could get married

in. Generally, the response to all of those

questions was no. And to be honest, actually views

on that haven't really changed that much. What has

really changed is, firstly, it's become more

closely linked to this idea of licence, to this

idea of a misuse of human freedom. And it's done

this through becoming associated with feminism,

which also seen as challenging gender roles and

challenging ideas of sex and things like that. So

the two kind of were naturally folded into one

another. but then also there's been a, development

in how the church thinks about its pastoral

responsibilities towards people. So over time

we've seen a much more, what people often just

refer to as pastoral, but what they really mean as

maybe a bit more sensitive or delicate or perhaps

even caring approach to dealing with the people

who, you know, populate our churches, who, church

leaders might have pastoral responsibility for.

And this has meant that in recent years we've seen

a very sincere, I think, actually, and very,

concerted attempt to get people to be nice to

trans people, regardless of what they actually

think about transness. and this is actually one of

the major changes, I think, that's made it much

more possible to be a trans Catholic in the first

place. I mentioned earlier that one of the things

that trans people need is a community that they

can exist in without constantly encountering

hostility and without constantly being confronted

with their transness as an obstacle to being a

Catholic and can be allowed the mental space to do

all the good stuff about Catholicism. M like love

God and feel God's love. it's created that kind of

possibility through having this much more caring

and delicate pastoral approach that doesn't just

see that someone doesn't kind of fit the mould of

what maybe even most people, or at least a lot of

Church leaders, think Catholicism should look

like, and then beat them over the head over with

it.

>> Julia: My next question was going to be, are, there

Catholics who have been supportive of inclusion?

And you've kind of started to talk about that, but

I guess the question is like the way you've said

about the Church changing and people have changed

their view to be more pastoral is part of that

question. But at the same time, are, people just

doing it because that's what they're being told

they should be doing?

>> Nicky: Yeah, I mean, I'm not convinced any Catholic

really does anything because they've been told

that they're meant to do it. I think that people

do things for a whole variety of different

reasons. And maybe some people are these

incredibly responsive, meek kind of people who are

mostly motivated by obedience. But I actually

think that most people are thinking for themselves

and even people who just respond to what they're

being told. But, in this respect, I think that a

lot of the openness to trans people, and indeed

queerness in general, that we're seeing in

contemporary Catholicism, especially in places

like the UK and Europe and things like. I think

that this is emerging from general changes in

cultures in those countries. People have come to

understand these things as holding stuff that's

genuinely good, or at least seeing that previous

attitudes towards these sorts of things. So

attitudes which said that you have to discipline

queerness or discipline transness, police it, stop

it from existing or being expressed in society.

People have started to see that that sort of thing

is generally not conducive to having a good

society. It leads to lots of violence, it leads to

social marginalisation, it leads to exclusion and

all the kind of material stuff associated with

that, like poverty and bad Health outcomes and

things like that. what we have seen, though,

particularly in the papacy of Pope Francis. In

fact, I say that Pope Francis was like a real

watershed moment for this. What Francis did was he

really emphasised the importance of this more, you

know, what people would say as a pastoral

approach, this more kind of caring pastoral

approach. And he, I think, legitimated it by

performing it. He exhibited it in his own pastoral

style. He appointed people who also exhibited it

to positions of authority. He was very careful to

do this stuff in ways that people would see and,

potentially identify with themselves. He made it

seem like a possibility for Catholicism and he

kind of baptised it by doing it at the highest

level of authority within the church. There have

always been people who have done this in the

church, but Francis was particularly special in

that he did this from the position of being the

Pope, and in a way that was genuinely inspiring.

>> Julia: So what brings you hope now, now that we're in a

different papacy?

>> Nicky: Yeah, I mean, partly, I guess we don't really know

that much about Leo. So, he's not done anything to

shatter my hope. I think my main hope actually,

though, or the main source of my hope really lies

with the fact that, as Pope Francis once again

taught, it's not us that brings these hopeful

processes to fruition. we encounter God working in

the world in these encounters with transcendence

within our, human experience. So it's slightly out

of our hands. And, this means that we then don't

have to worry so much about human failure either.

God quite famously turns failure and evil to good.

So in a sense, then, this does give me something

genuine and powerful and, unfailing to put my hope

in. And, that's kind of also the basis of a lot of

elements of my faith. Obviously, this doesn't mean

that, if you focus now on a more kind of concrete

or specific level, that doesn't mean that

everything that could go wrong is going to

actually go right in the end. Hoping in God It's a

very big picture hope, but it says very little

about what's going to happen in the next day or in

the next couple of months, or with the next bit of

legislation or whatever. In this context, my hope

really resides much more in the fundamental

goodness and resiliency that I find in people

around me. We live in a really scary time. just

look at basically anything. Pick whatever headline

scares you most, and that is the time that we're

living in. And I can't obviously say that

everything's going to Be all right or work out

perfectly. And not everyone is going to make it

through these things. Not everyone is making it

through these things. But equally I think that

there's a kind of fundamental goodness and

resilience to the human spirit, which is never

completely crushed with this sort of thing.

>> Julia: So what has been your experience of being part of

a Catholic community? And how do ordinary

Catholics create that safer, welcoming community

for others?

>> Nicky: Yeah, so like I said, my experience with

Catholicism has actually been very nice and like

hospitable. And I've always found like a niche

that I can occupy. And I think that actually the

one thing that's actually. No, no, there are two

things, two things which had made Catholicism so

hospitable to me. The first thing, and this is

something that you should be able to get in any

Catholic community, is like, for people to just be

normal towards you, like, treat you like a normal

person and let you be a normal person yourself

and, just interact with you like they'd interact

with any other person without like making a big

deal of everything. And this can be in a negative

way where you encounter someone who's transphobic,

or it can also be in a slightly positive way where

you get the well meaning person who's super

overbearing and just makes everything super

awkward. And obviously when you're encountering

someone who's different to yourself, it's

difficult to be normal because it puts you out of

sorts. And it can be something that you're not

used to, navigating. But honestly, just, just

talking to someone like a regular person and

letting them talk to you like a regular person and

letting you be a part of a community without

raising issues about it or whatever. Like that is

100% just the best way to make a, safe and

nurturing community. Where this becomes harder is

where, you know, you run up against the real

sticking issues, stuff like what toilets do you

let someone use? Do you let them use the toilets

that matches the gender in which they're living

as, or do you segregate them away into the

disabled toilet or something like that? also in

terms of participation in the sacramental life of

the Church, and the question of who can get

married in Catholicism is a really complex one

that touches on questions of how the church thinks

about fertility and things like that. And there's

probably too much to go into here, but there will

always be points that are really difficult and

there are always aspects of Catholicism that

produce aspects of community life that end up

being hostile or alienating. I don't think that

that can ever be overcome unless Catholicism

changes drastically. And, you know, the Church is

a living tradition and its beliefs and practises

evolve and develop. But then also, the Church

isn't free to just change what it believes, based

on things like convenience or even, you know, its

best intentions to be hospitable to people. These

issues are just kind of more complicated than

that. and I don't pretend to have any solution to

any of them. That's, like, outside of my pay

grade.

But, I guess the other thing, though, is giving

trans Catholics, and indeed all forms of queer

Catholic space to be both queer and trans and

Catholic. so, you know, being normal might mean

not considering those sorts of things or, like,

making those sorts of things a big deal, but then

we also need to be able to make a big deal of

these things among ourselves and to do so freely

and to have space to explore them and talk about

how they really matter to us and how they really

shape our experience. And being able to provide

space for that communities like we have here at

Farm Street, like LGBT Catholics, Westminster,

where you can encounter other queer Catholics and

share these really deep and important things.

That's incredibly valuable, too. Like you. One of

the kind of hostile narratives you get around

queer Catholicism is this idea that you're a

Catholic as person descriptors, like being queer

or whatever are, secondary to all of that. and

that's sort of true, but where it's not true is

where that's just a way of saying, so don't talk

about it or don't identify with your queerness.

People who say that rarely have a problem with

people talking about their national identity. So

they talk about, oh, yeah, I'm an English Catholic

or I'm an Irish Catholic or whatever, because they

recognise that nations are not something that God

created. Like, God did not create England, God did

not create France as it exists today or whatever.

These are stuff that humans have created. They're

about our, history, they're about our experience

in society, they're about the way that we relate

to other people through culture and all of that

sort of thing. But they're super important because

they do shape the way that we experience the world

and they experience our faith. You know, if you're

a Catholic from, Nigeria, the nature of your

Catholicism is going to be very different from

your Catholicism as, like, an English Catholic,

because it will have been shaped by your culture

and your history in really profound ways and ways

to get people to try and do Catholicism without

engaging with that sort of stuff, you'd actually

be asking them to have a very impoverished kind of

faith. The same goes for queer people. so it's

important that people can have a space where they

can do that and then also have that space, not be

a source of policing or discipline. You mustn't

have someone who then comes in and says, you can

be a queer Catholic, but you can only be a queer

Catholic or think about yourself as a queer

Catholic, or explore that in this one particular

way. And everything else is legitimate. You've got

to give people freedom to explore those aspects of

their lives because that's the bit of their life

in which they encounter God. And if they're going

to recognise that encounter, they need to be able

to look for where God is arising in that. So their

space is also incredibly vital. Sure.

>> Julia: So are there ways people can get more involved or

learn more?

>> Nicky: Yeah. So, I'm really lucky in that, ah, I have a

job that also lets me do teaching and to share the

stuff that I love and find life giving and

powerful and fruitful and nourishing with

basically anyone who wants to come along. The

Jesuit Centre does teaching on a, tonne of

different things. In fact, we've got three

streams. We've got a spirituality stream, we've

got a kind, of straight down the line sort of

theology stream where you'd learn about

Christology, the study of Christ or, doctrine of

creation or that sort of thing. And then we have

my stuff, which is social and environmental

justice. So I get to teach on topics that touch on

how faith, and ethics and stuff like that work

within our society. If you're particularly

interested in trans stuff, I am in fact running a

course on trans theology. later on in this year.

It's going to be a fairly introductory course

course. You might have to read some stuff that can

be a bit difficult, but the purpose of the course

is to kind of guide you through those sorts of

things and, give you space to explore this stuff

in a way that gets to draw on the best of people's

thinking and insight within the context of

academic theology. And by exploring it together,

we can kind of gather the fruits of that activity

and hopefully glean something from it. And as a

teacher, I also then get to learn from all the

students who come along. And in March we're having

an open open day. So if you're not quite there in

terms of committing to a whole course, they tend

to be five weeks, one day a week, or one evening a

week. But if you want to kind of dip your toe in a

bit more hesitantly, we have an open day coming up

in March where we'll have taster sessions on a

variety of different topics. You can meet some of

the other people who are interested in the Jesuit

Centre, and maybe make some friends. You can meet

me and the other tutors here. It's going to be

really good. It's the first time we've done it,

so, we're going to be going all out for it. So

it'd be lovely to see you there.

>> Julia: So what do you wish you knew about trans inclusion

in the church?

>> Nicky: It's hard to say what I wish I knew because the

process of discovery itself has been so amazing

for me. I think maybe what I wish I knew is, like,

how amazing this whole thing was going to be. you

know, I came to Catholicism as an adult, I

transitioned as an adult, which is a really common

thing. and when I embarked on both of these

courses, I did so with a great amount of anxiety

and a great amount of fear and in a great amount

of uncertainty. And it was really difficult to get

myself into a headspace where I had the kind of, I

guess, strength to persist with it. I'm not

naturally a person who. Or at least before this, I

was not naturally a person who stick my head above

the parapet. I was not someone who's confident in

myself or in my opinions. I was very deferential

to authority in a way that wasn't necessarily

based in a good view of authority, that sort of

thing, often against my own better impulses. And

part of my process of growth through all of this

has been unlearning that stuff. And, learning to

have hope and learning to have faith in both God

and, like myself, where it's justified. And the

thing that I really wish I knew or known at that

point then was really that this was going to

genuinely be something that was wonderful and

nourishing and transformative and powerful.

Because to begin with, I was just so afraid. but

it's not. Those fears have not been borne out. And

the more that I journey into both Catholicism and

transness, the more exciting and rich and

beautiful it becomes. So I wish I'd kind of known

that to begin also with.

>> Julia: And finally, what are you grateful for?

>> Nicky: I think I'm grateful for not only the chance to do

this exploration, but then the chance to share

this exploration with other people. I think that

the things that we do in community or engaging

with other people are immeasurably more valuable

than the things that you do on your own. And, you

know, there's a model of academic life where you

just study something that's only of interest to

you and, you know, five other people or whatever.

But I've stumbled into a life where I get to

reflect on something that matters to a whole great

deal of people. And this is genuinely wonderful.

And it makes my life feel much more valuable than

if I'd just been, you know, I know, doing

something arcane and, relatively more

insignificant. And it's given me the opportunity

to learn from loads of different people and really

kind of gain from the genuine wisdom and virtue

that I've encountered in the other people who are

invested in this stuff. And I myself have then, I

think, become a better person because of it and

because of the other people that I've encountered.

So that's really what I'm grateful for, I think.

>> Julia: Thanks for listening to Things I Wish I Knew. I

know this conversation is going to stay with me

because Nicky speaks of her own experience as a

Catholic trans woman. Has, mostly been a positive

experience. It's really great to hear when

community is done. Well, how about you? We love to

hear how Nicky's story resonated with you. And why

not also tell us if you're facing an experience

you wish you knew how to look at differently. It

might just be something we can help with. You can

find out more about this and other

themes at thinkingfaith.org. Thank you again for

listening. I hope you'll join me again again next

time on Things I Wish I Knew.