Catholic Apologetics Guidebook

Welcome to the Catholic Apologetics Guidebook!

Catholic apologetics is the branch of theology which involves explaining and defending the Catholic faith, especially on those points where it is often questioned, misunderstood, disputed, or even attacked.  Here you will find links to the best resources (articles, mp3 audio downloads, books, and more) on a wide variety of topics that often come up in religious discussions between Catholics and non-Catholics.  I hope that this site will be a helpful and reliable guide for Catholics who want to explain and defend their faith, and also for non-Catholics who want to hear the Catholic side of the story.

How to Use This Site

The left-hand side of the page contains a list of major apologetics subject areas that should get you started.  From there you can find specific topics within each subject area, with a list of good apologetics resources on each topic.  There is also a Dialogues and Writings page, which contains some interesting conversations that I have had with non-Catholics on various issues, as well as a couple of original articles that I have written.  Or for a one-page overview of the entire site, please check out the Site Map.

About Me

"So who runs this site anyway?", you may ask.  That would be me.  My name is Paul.  I am a Catholic layman, a husband, and a father, who spends far too much of his limited free time on the internet.  I first became interested in Catholic apologetics several years ago, as I sought to understand not only what I believe as a Catholic (which I already understood fairly well), but also why these beliefs make sense and are defensible, from the point of view of reason, history, sacred Scripture, and sacred Tradition.  Since then, I have spent many hours reading Catholic apologetics books and web sites, and I think that God has also used apologetics as a path to help to deepen and solidify my faith.

I decided to create this site to serve as a reference to myself and to others, to serve as a one-stop quick and easy guide to the best Catholic apologetics resources on the internet.  I hope that you find it helpful.

Disclaimer

This web site does not attempt to give a full explanation of every aspect of Catholic doctrine.  For such an explanation, I would recommend the Catechism of the Catholic Church or the shorter Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  Also, I have tried to link only to sources which are orthodox and faithful to Catholic doctrine (except for a few links to non-Catholic sources where specifically noted).  But please do use discernment and common sense, and check the Catechism if you have any doubts as to whether a particular resource is accurately presenting Catholic doctrine.

Site Updates

April 12, 2008:  The Catholic Apologetics Guidebook is up and running!

April 24, 2008:  Added the "About Me" page, and updated the text on the home page.

March 27, 2009:  Please accept my apologies for the lack of site updates over the past 11 months.  I greatly overestimated the amount of free time that I have available for maintaining a web site!  :-)  I have made several updates today, as follows:

• Removed or corrected quite a few broken links.  Catholic Answers had to remove most of their archived radio programs from their web site due to licensing issues with their old theme music, and thus my links to their programs no longer were working.  I plan to restore those links here if the programs become available for download again.  (And it has still been a while since I checked every link on the site, so there are probably still a few broken ones here and there, which I will try to find and fix as time permits.)
• Eliminated the "Site Updates" page and the "About Me" page, and added the information from those pages to the home page.
• Revised the home page text.