Queer Places:
Abbey of Gethsemani Trappist Cemetery
Gethsemane, Nelson County, Kentucky, USA
Matthew
Kelty (November 25, 1915 - February 18, 2011) said he believed that gays made the best monks because they were already on the road to a life integrating the masculine and the feminine sides. They didn’t need a woman to awaken and arouse their feminine side. They already had it.
Matthew Kelty was born Charles Richard Kelly, Jr. on November 25, 1915 in South Boston, Massachusetts. His parents were Charles Richard Kelty and Mary Jane Watson of Florence, New Jersey. His father was an engineer - machines, tool and die. He was educated in the public schools of Milton, Massachusetts, from 1922-1934.
He followed his vocation to the religious life, attended the seminary of the Society of the Divine Word in Techny, Illinois, and was ordained a Roman Catholic Priest in 1946. Fr. Matthew served as a writer for the magazine of the order, and became a Divine Word missionary in Papua, New Guinea, from 1947 to 1951. Sensing all the while that his vocation was to the contemplative life, Fr. Matthew petitioned to enter the Abbey of Gethsemani in February, 1960. "A natural love for the monastic life drew me to Gethsemani and fulfilled a lifelong dream." he said. He was dispensed from simple profession, and took his final vows on June 24, 1962.
In 1970, he was sent to a small, experimental monastery near Oxford, North Carolina. When that was finished, he wished to explore a life of solitude, and received permission in 1973, to live in a hermitage in New Guinea, a place and whose people he loved. He returned to Gethsemani in 1982. /p>
Fr. Matthew's books include, "My Song is of Mercy", "Gethsemani Homilies", "Call of the Wild Geese", "Sermons in a Monastery", and "Singing for the Kingdom". He is also the subject of a documentary made by Morgan Atkinson, "The Poetry of a Soul".
He died February 18, 2011 in Gethsemane, Kentucky, USA. Matthew is buried in Abbey of Gethsemani Trappist Cemetery in Gethsemane, Kentucky, USA.
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