Catholic Apologetics Guidebook

History

Topics on This Page:

The Early Church
The Alleged "Great Apostasy"
Pagan Origins of Catholicism?
The Middle Ages
The Crusades
The Inquisition
The Protestant Reformation
The Galileo Controversy
Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust
The Da Vinci Code
Miscellaneous Historical Claims

Christianity is by definition a historical religion, because we believe that God chose to enter history through the Incarnation.  But nevertheless, history (or often pseudo-history) is sometimes used to criticize the Catholic faith.  The links below may be helpful in responding to some of these criticisms.

The Early Church

A non-Catholic Christian once encouraged me to see how God could "help us get closer to what the early church had."  But what he and others might not realize is that many people have looked at the early Christian church (mainly by reading the writings of the early church fathers) and have found the early church's teachings and practice to be very much in line with modern Catholic beliefs and practice.  Following are some links to good resources about the history of the early church and the writings of the early church fathers.

Articles:

• Back to the Beginning: A Brief Introduction to the Ancient Catholic Church by George Sim Johnston
• Early Church Fathers Overview – Dr. Marcellino D'Ambrosio gives a brief introduction to who the early church fathers were.
• Catholic Answers: Fathers Know Best – Links to articles on various doctrinal topics, with quotes from the early church fathers on each topic
• Why I'm Catholic – This article by Stephen Ray contains several quotes from the early church fathers that played a role in his conversion to the Catholic Church.

Books:

• Four Witnesses: The Early Church in Her Own Words by Rod Bennett
• We Look for a Kingdom: The Everyday Lives of the Early Christians by Carl Sommer
• Faith of the Early Fathers, Volume 1, edited by William Jurgens
• Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers (Penguin Classics)

Video:

• Apostolic Fathers: Handing on the Faith (Footprints of God Series) with Steve Ray

Web Sites:

• Writings of the Early Church Fathers

The Alleged "Great Apostasy"

Several non-Catholic churches or religions, such as Mormonism, claim that the early Christian church fell away into a complete and total apostasy.  The following resources can help to refute such claims.

Articles:

• In Search of "The Great Apostasy" – This article by Patrick Madrid responds specifically to Mormon claims of a great apostasy in the early church, but it could apply just as well to similar claims made by several other non-Catholic groups.

Audio:

• Rod Bennett on the Early Church Fathers and the "Great Apostasy" – I highly recommend this excellent talk by Rod Bennett, from an apologetics conference in Michigan in 2006.

Pagan Origins of Catholicism?

Articles:

• Catholic Answers: Is Catholicism Pagan?
• Pagan Influence Fallacy by James Akin
• Did the Catholic Church Have Its Origin in Paganism? – Protestant pastor Ralph Woodrow is the author of a book called Babylon Mystery Religion, which claimed that many Catholic beliefs and practices were taken from paganism.  In this article, Woodrow explains how and why he later changed his views and decided to stop publishing Babylon Mystery Religion.
• Our Jewish Heritage by Martin Barrack.  Admittedly this article has nothing to do with paganism.  However, in a roundabout way it establishes the ground for a good argument against charges of pagan influence on Catholicism, because it shows how Catholic beliefs and practices are deeply rooted in Jewish (not pagan) beliefs and practices.

The Middle Ages

It seems that few periods of history are as commonly misunderstood and incorrectly stereotyped as the Middle Ages in Europe.  Hopefully the following resources (along with the ones below on the Crusades and the Inquisition) can shed some light on this supposedly "dark" period of history.

Articles:

• Dark Ages and Secularist Rages by Carl Olson
• Who Burned the Witches? by Sandra Miesel
• A Gift from the Middle Ages by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. – This article discusses how the Middle Ages gave rise to the university system.

Books:

• Those Terrible Middle Ages: Debunking the Myths by Regine Pernoud
• How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

The Crusades

Articles:

• The Crusades by Paul Crawford, Assistant Professor of History at Alma College
• The Real History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden, Associate Professor of History at Saint Louis University
• Rethinking the Crusades by William Urban, Professor of History at Monmouth College
• Rethinking the Crusades by Jonathan Riley Smith, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University
• Crusade Myths by Thomas F. Madden, Associate Professor of History at Saint Louis University

The Inquisition

Articles:

• Inquisition by James Hitchcock, Professor of History at Saint Louis University
• The Truth About the Spanish Inquisition by Thomas F. Madden, Associate Professor of History at Saint Louis University
• Beyond the Myth of The Inquisition by Fr. Brian Van Hove, S.J.  (A shorter version of this article can be found here:  The Inquisitions of History: The Mythology and the Reality)
• An Inquisition Primer by Robert Lockwood
• Secrets of the Spanish Inquisition Revealed by Robert Lockwood

The Protestant Reformation

Articles:

• What Was the Reformation? (Chapter 6 of The Great Heresies) by Hilaire Belloc
• Who's Who in the Reformation by Geoffrey Saint-Clair
• Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work: Louis Bouyer on the Reformation by Mark Brumley

Books:

• The Roots of the Reformation by Karl Adam – This link allows you to read the full text of this short book online.

The Galileo Controversy

Articles:

• The Galileo Affair by George Sim Johnston
• Galileo Galilei by Bertrand Conway
• The Dispute Between Galileo and the Catholic Church by Donald DeMarco
• The Papacy and Galileo by Patrick Madrid
• The Galileo Legend by Thomas Lessl
• Catholic Answers: The Galileo Controversy

Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust

Articles:

• Blaming the Wartime Pope – This 1998 Newsweek article by Kenneth Woodward gives a brief but convincing debunking of revisionist historical claims which blame Pope Pius XII for failing to stop or to speak out against the Holocaust during World War II.
• 800,000 Saved by Pius XII's 'Silence' by Donald DeMarco
• Pope Pius XII and the Jews – Sister Margherita Marchione tells how her convent sheltered and hid Jewish men, women, and children during World War II, as did many other monasteries and convents, at the instruction of Pope Pius XII.
• A Righteous Gentile: Pope Pius XII and the Jews by Rabbi David G. Dalin
• How Pius XII Protected Jews by Jimmy Akin
• Moscow's Assault on the Vatican by Ion Mihai Pacepa – A former high-ranking Romanian intelligence officer tells how the KGB waged a disinformation campaign to portray Pope Pius XII as having been sympathetic to Hitler and complicit in the Holocaust.

Audio:

• Catholic Answers Live: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis with Rabbi David G. Dalin

Books:

• The Myth of Hitler's Pope: Pope Pius XII and His Secret War Against Nazi Germany by Rabbi David G. Dalin

The Da Vinci Code

Dan Brown's popular novel The Da Vinci Code certainly does not have many nice things to say about the Catholic Church or about Christianity in general.  But so what, right?  After all, there are plenty of anti-Christian or anti-Catholic books in existence; why focus so much attention on this one?  The answer to that question lies both in the immense popularity of this novel (including the popular movie adaptation), and in the fact that a significant number of readers have accepted Dan Brown's anti-Catholic and anti-Christian historical claims as being true, or at least plausible.  The resources below go into great detail to demonstrate the complete inaccuracy, and indeed absurdity, of many of the historical and religious "facts" in The Da Vinci Code.

Articles:

• How Dark the Con of Dan by Archbishop George Niederauer – This article gives a brief, readable, and even-handed explanation of just exactly why this book and movie are offensive to Catholics, and what the real truth is behind several of Dan Brown's historical claims.  This article is a good starting point for those who may not be interested in the level of detail offered in the other resources in this section.
• Cracking the Anti-Catholic Code, Part 1 – This excellent two-part article by Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel (this is part one; part two is below) is an excellent debunking of the various religious and historical claims in The Da Vinci Code, with many references and external links to substantiate the information which is presented here.
• Cracking the Anti-Catholic Code, Part 2 by Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel
• Exposing the Errors in The Da Vinci Code – This article is actually a series of excerpts from the book The Da Vinci Hoax by Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel, and it covers much of the same material as the excellent two-part Cracking the Anti-Catholic Code article linked above.
• Dismantling The Da Vinci Code by Sandra Miesel
• The "It's Just Fiction!" Doctrine: Reading too Little into The Da Vinci Code – For those who still wonder why anyone would waste time debunking a work of fiction like The Da Vinci Code, this excellent article by Carl Olson is a must-read.

Books:

• The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in The Da Vinci Code by Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel
• De-Coding Da Vinci: The Facts Behind the Fiction of The Da Vinci Code by Amy Welborn

Miscellaneous Historical Claims

Articles:

• Debunking the Persistent Myth of Pope Joan by Patrick Madrid
• The Popess Who Just Won't Go Away by Robert Lockwood
• Pagan Origins of Christmas? by Mark Shea
• Calculating Christmas – William Tighe, Associate Professor of History at Muhlenberg College, argues against the commonly-held idea that the date of Christmas was chosen to correspond to the date of a pagan feast.

Books:

• Pope Fiction: Answers to 30 Myths and Misconceptions About the Papacy by Patrick Madrid