I recently met a man who cross-dressed for eight years. For four years, he identified as “non-binary,” and for the four following years, he identified exclusively as a woman. He is now a baptized, practicing Christian man living a full sacramental and liturgical life.
What happened? To make a long story short, a friend invited him to attend Mass. He was an atheist, and his parents lamented his atheism. He started attending Mass, started studying the Faith, and was eventually baptized (while presenting himself as a woman!). After receiving the sacraments, and regularly receiving the Eucharist and going to confession for about a year, he embraced his biological sex. Now his parents lament his traditional Catholicism. Parents can be hard to please sometimes.
When I think of his story, I can’t help but recall Pope Benedict XVI’s introductory remarks in his 2005 encyclical Deus Caritas Est (God is Love):
Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.
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