Batholics and Cathists rise again

Over at Frink, allusions to the Southern Batholic Convention recalled to mind “ye borogoves,” said by Lewis Caroll to be “all mimsy.”

This particular inventive use of words bespeaks Baptist ministerial behavior that reeks of doctrinal inquisition — no reason to “gyre and gymble,” the seasonal appropriateness of wabes notwithstanding.

Former Biblical Recorder Editor Tony Cartledge used those two faintly whimsical words, applying them to to similar effect It is, indeed, Cartledge’s past use of Batholic and Cathist that forms the core of Frink’s blog.

Fascinating coinages, both words have been employed from time to time elsewhere on the web.

“Batholics in Bohemia, …or when your pastor enquires of you,” is a Czeck cartoon which was inspired by Tony Cartledge’s May 20, 2005, blog (no longer online) “Baptists or Batholics?”

I am informed that the caption translates, “Did you vote for Christian democratic party, Civic democratic party or social democrats? According to the new SBC instruction no. 214/09 we cannot accept liberal voters.”

Batholic and Cathist are found in the sometimes painful online struggles of teens who are growing up with one parent who is Catholic and another who is Baptist.

Self-description as Batholic may be attended by less turbulence as the blogger gains years of experience.

As for Cathist, Papa Slugg of the Shooting Forum gently styles himself a Cathist.
One blogger terms a friend a Batholic and they both appear to be happy about the term. The term is also applied, “Hee hee” at a blog whose overarching view is humorous.

Still, the diversion of those writings, each of which I found to be enlightening in its way, failed to carry me far from Cartledge’s and Frink’s concerns. An inclination to enforce doctrine through censure precipitated from the pulpit is, I think, a human rather than a denomenational weakness.

There is about censure from the pulpit, or even indirectly from the recent Baptist State Convention of North Carolina gathering in Greensboro, an odor I cannot shake from my nostrils.

Is that the the ashes of Girolamo Savonarola I smell?

Or just another volume of Lewis Carroll’s poetry burning?