Reintroducing Myself

Where I Am on the Journey

Dear friends,

I think it’s time I reintroduced myself.

My name is Matthew Knight. Until recently, I wrote here under a pen name, sharing theological reflections, scriptural exegesis, and spiritual writing that emerged from my life and experience as a gay Roman Catholic priest. I have tried to write from a place at once deeply rooted in the Catholic tradition, and quietly wrestling with what that tradition demands of LGBTQ+ Catholics today.

Since I started Deconstructing Cleric, my life has shifted in ways I never could have imagined. I started asking serious questions about my vocation, about love, about my body, my desires, my future. I deferred these questions for years, in the name of obedience or holiness or discernment, but something finally broke open in me last year. I began to come to different conclusions than I had been taught, and I realized I couldn’t keep living a life that required me to deny the truth of who I am.

Things have picked up speed over the past couple of months.

Last Sunday, I celebrated my last Mass as a priest. I was so grateful for the presence of dear family and friends, some of whom came from the other end of the country to be with me that weekend. I’ve now stepped away from active ministry as a priest, and I’m entering a new season of life: one that I hope will still be marked by prayer, still grounded in the Gospel and shaped by ministry and service, but no longer burdened under the weight of silence and suppression. I’m in transition in every sense of the word: vocationally, spiritually, even geographically (writing this from a hotel somewhere between Boise and Denver). And yes, relationally, too, as I’m making this journey with my incredible boyfriend.

And dear friends, I want to bring you along with me on the journey, too.

My goal with this blog has never been to convince anyone of anything, nor to wage war on the Church. As I move into this new season, my hope more than ever is simply to bear witness to the quiet, complicated miracle of a life that is becoming more real, and invite you to move into greater truth, freedom, and joy—whatever that looks like for you.

Earlier this summer, I knelt in prayer at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, and I received a kind of intuition, an inner voice that has stayed with me ever since:

“Don’t be afraid to lose what must be lost.”

I was already mentally and spiritually preparing for this transition, and I had counted the cost. I knew much of what I would be losing: my public role, my title, a sense of identity, institutional belonging, fitting neatly into theological categories, relationships, community, a future I had long imagined. But those are largely external. It’s much arder, more frightening, to lose the internal things: the habits of self-erasure, the fear of being fully known, the compulsion to strive and earn what was always meant to be gift.

Those parts of my heart are very much a work in progress. But as I wrote in Words on the Word for last weekend, I’ve come to believe that loss is a necessary part of growth. Loss is the landscape through which truth comes to find us.

This morning, I read a poem by Rumi that speaks directly to that reality:

You were given
the intuition to shoot an arrow
and then to dig where it landed,
but you shot with all your archery skill.

You were told to draw the bow
with only a fraction of your ability.

What you are looking for
is nearer than the big vein
on your neck. Let the arrow drop.

Do not exhaust yourself
like the philosophers who strain to shoot
the high arcs of their thought-arrows.

The more skill you use,
the farther you will be
from what your deepest love wants.

I’ve spent much of my life aiming high, trying to be good, holy, virtuous. But now I’m learning something else: How to let the arrow drop. How to listen to my body. How to trust desire. How to relax.

The other night, I found myself lying in bed as my boyfriend slept quietly by my side, my dog snoring at our feet, and I thought: This is it. Not perfection. Not some dreamy, idealized future. Just the still, sweet hush of a life that I can finally call my own.

As I’ve said, if you had asked me a year ago, I could never have imagined the journey I’m now on, or the companions I would find along the way. In many ways, the journey is just beginning. But I am, at last, drinking from the well of what my heart has always wanted.

So if you’ve followed this project from the beginning: Thank you. Your quiet presence has helped carry me through some of the most sacred and painful stretches of the road so far.

And if you’re just joining us now: Welcome. I hope this space can be a place where we keep wrestling with God, seeking the Spirit, striving to tell the truth, and daring to ask honest questions, like the one I’ve been asking, inspired by Rumi and Our Lady of Guadalupe: What must be lost in order to find what my deepest love wants?

And don’t worry. Deconstructing Cleric is just getting started. I’ll still be sharing essays at the intersection of theology, Scripture, and queer identities. But I’ll also be writing more personally, more directly, more vulnerably—and under my true name. I think that’s the kind of witness the Church needs. And frankly, it’s the kind I need to give.

Wherever you are on your journey, know that you are not alone. Let’s walk together.

With love and hope,

Matthew