The Sound of Jesus Slapping His Forehead
Repeatedly. At What So-Called Christians Do to the Least of These
Repeatedly. At What So-Called Christians Do to the Least of These
My wife and I have been making a concerted effort to wipe out junk mail of all kinds—catalogs, credit offers, flyers, charitable organizations. Those we keep in touch with contact us electronically. Saves the trees and reduces carbon footprint.
Everyone Plays Nice, But Not Them Christians
Thus far, every organization, business, or charity we’ve requested to remove us from their mailing lists has responded cheerfully, applauding us, even.
Except one.
EWTN—Eternal Word Television Network, the conservative Catholic television channel that makes Cardinal Richelieu look like a libtard.
In response to my emailed request, Kristin Johnson, of EWTN’s “Mission Advancement” Department wrote this back:
Dear Bethany,
Thank you for your email.
Respectfully, we are unable to make any changes to the type and frequency of postal mail that a person receives from EWTN based on the request of a third party.
Thank you for your understanding.
May God richly bless you!
That “Third Party”
See, when I imbibed the snake oil EWTN peddled, I also happened to think I was the male I was assigned at birth. Lotsa confusion there. To find out how I discovered the Bethany I always was, check out my memoir, coming out Valentine’s Day, 2020.
So, Kristin understandably thought Bethany was a “third party” because EWTN, nearly alone among all marketers, still addressed my mail by my dead name.
This Aggression Would Not Go Unchecked
I responded, and this little exchange should tell you all you need to know about the bruises on Christ’s forehead.
Dear Kristin,
May the Beloved richly bless you, as well!
Attached is my sealed and certified Court-Ordered Name Change. I was known as [DEAD NAME] Beeler, but I am, per the Court Order, Bethany A. Beeler. I am a trans woman. When, years ago, I began receiving information from EWTN, it was under my previous name and the name of my wife (cc:ed here). We are still joyfully married after 32+ years.
So, you are not here corresponding with a third party.
What’s more, unlike every charity, place of business, and government entity I’ve contacted to request the ceasing of direct postal mailings to help the environment and save trees, EWTN is the only organization to respond to me with the stipulation that you “are unable to make any changes to the type and frequency of postal mail that a person receives from EWTN based on the request of a third party.”
Further, EWTN is the only organization to continue to inappropriately mail to my dead name despite every other organization’s somehow managing to automatically change to my correct name, Bethany Beeler. No, wait! There is one other one — The Confessing Movement of the United Methodist Church — uncannily, another so-called Christian organization that refuses to behave in a Christ-like manner to the least of these, the Beloved’s children.
How might I declare that behavior not Christ-like, Kristin? Such behavior fails to render even a modicum of the love borne in the Christ: to simply refer to persons as how we have asked. Refusing our simple request is tantamount to EWTN’s saying that we’re not worthy as human persons of dignity to be called anything but what EWTN insists on calling us. In short, it’s an objectification of us as human beings because, as we are, we do not fit EWTN’s definition of order. I do not imply that you, Kristin, feel this way (though, indeed, you may, seeing as how you volunteer/are employed by EWTN). However, it is exactly the kind of behavior I’ve learned to expect from EWTN — behavior that, sadly, shames the Name of Christ among the gentiles.
Now, hopefully, you can see that, although I had at one time identified with some of the ideologies then espoused by EWTN when on your direct mailing list under my previous name, I no longer adhere to those positions. Hopefully, too, you can see that, for several years now to this very moment and beyond, I regard what is broadcast by EWTN to be hideous, deadly, and toxic anathema to all persons of goodwill and grace.
Last, EWTN’s direct mailings to me not only eat up trees that don’t deserve to have their dead flesh pulped and engraved in EWTN drivel, but also I find fishing your 20th-century, rosary-clicking, geriatric-crowd, doily-wearing-mass-goers marketing shit from my mailbox to be an unholy and execrable pain in the ass. Please, stop.
I’ve asked you politely and not so politely (given EWTN’s ridiculously bureaucratic response — which itself shows that EWTN is more about the money than about respecting the wishes of those whom you purport to serve in the name of Jesus of Nazareth — I’ve actually been more charitable than your so-called “charitable” efforts ever amount to) to cease and desist your direct postal mailings to me and to otherwise erase, expunge, excommunicate, and blot out my name from EWTN’s high holy sacred mailing list writ. And you can tell Cardinal Burke and Raymond “Brains-on-Dry-Ice” Arroyo I said that.
If you persist in sending me these materials, rest assured that, not only will my retained legal representation be in touch with your backwoods Alabama headquarters with the janky, duct-taped satellite dish across the road from your meth-addled, cross-eyed neighbors, but I will also make it my personal mission to spread far and wide across social and concrete media the utterly petulant shit-headedness you are putting me through to get my name/address off your goddamned mailing list and to stop sending to my mailbox the raddie-traddie Catholic argle-bargle that EWTN mistakes for the authentic practice of the Faith and the Means of Grace.
Translation: Between me and you Kristin, can you do me a big favsie and just get EWTN to stop sending me its junk mail? Pretty please?
(I’d ask Saint Jude, but, frankly, he told me that EWTN was way beyond the levels of hopelessness for which he normally intercedes. Therefore, I offer up this prayer through the intercession of Saint Genesius, Patron of Clowns; I figure he’s the only one EWTN might still listen to.)
May both my earnestness and my tongue-in-cheek hyperbole richly bless you and move you and EWTN to the miracle of not direct mailing me.
Live Long and Prosper,
Bethany
I’ll let you know what response I get!
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