How to start your own apologetics library

[kepha1]

Finding and storing apologetic information:

This is for those who may not be from the computer generation, or didn’t take enough computer classes.

Have you ever wished you could have that article you read last week that would be perfect to quote now?
Your favorites or bookmarks are 5 miles long?
Never heard of “file management”?
Getting too many hate sites every time you do a search?
I have a few ideas that can make things a lot easier that we can all build on.
How to search for a topic:

Let’s say you want to find something on “The Assumption of Mary” for example. I am using this as an example because it is one of the hardest doctrines to explain, which is why it is a favorite for anti-Catholics to challenge.

1. Go to any search engine.
2. Shrink this page down by clicking the minus sign on the top right of your monitor screen, the page will not really disappear, but it will be a little box on the bottom of the monitor.
3. By clicking that box, this page will come back up.
4. Shrink it down again and then click the blue “E” to open another window and you should see a search box right away, or go to yahoo. Now you can go back and forth between windows.

Key in the words “assumption of mary” If you use quotation marks, you will get sites with that phrase. If not, the words will be in bold over the place in the description.

You now have 20,700 web sites containing that phrase. The first page shows 20 URL’s (links or web pages). 2 or 3 of them are garbage, and just a few may be questionable. So you can easily see which ones are by revisionist liars, such as “christiantruth”so avoid them unless you are doing a study on hate on the internet, or unless you like those places as you pull the wings off insects.

Lets do an experiment.

 

[kepha1]

Lets find out what Ireneus said about Mary, if anything. How do I know to look for him? I am no patristic scholar, but I did see his name on the first page of our experiment.

Go back to the search box, and key in “assumption of mary” ireneus be sure to include the quotation marks in the right places, but not on ireneus.

Now you have reduced 20,700 web sites down to 11. Lets reduce again.

The last four I am not sure about, so I wont waste my time looking in there.

Numbers 3, 4, 6 are the same, so we are down to 5 .

No. 1 & 2 are copies, and 2, “justforcatholics” is anti-Catholic, the title is designed to rope in ignorant Catholics. Unscrupulous deceivers are a malignancy on the internet, so I hope I can show you how to avoid wasting time. Common sense will tell you which sites are evil, which sites are just erroneous, and which sites are nourishing. From experience, I know that ewtn and cin are good Catholic web sites. Angelfire has a good article, so lets continue on with our experiment.

Lets pick no. 4, James Akin, ewtn. STOP! Click on where it says “cached”, and see what happens. “Ireneus” and “Assumption of Mary” only appear once each in the entire 37K article, so you don’t have to spend hours reading massive amounts of text. Just scroll until you see the highlit colors.

Go back to the search page you were first on, copy and paste the link into a word program, and save it in your files under “Mary”, or put it in your favorites or bookmark. Do this every time you find a gem on Mary, and you will always have a handy reference for each subject that interests you. After a while, your library will grow, and you will know where everything is.

Try making variations in your word search, like “Assumption of Mary” Church Fathers", or “blessed virgin mary” "pope john paul II"or “Blessed Virgin Mary” catholic apologetics.

I recommend adding the words “catholic apologetics” to any subject you are researching. What I find interesting is I did a search for “Blessed Virgin Mary” Catholic, I got 154,000 web sites, there were no hate sites on the first page, and only one dumb news article on the 10th page. (#181-200) and none on #261-280, and none on #541-560. See the difference in what the wording makes in the search?
Two words (Blessed Virgin) on the internet are more terrible than an army set in battle array.

 

[e-catholic]

Great idea! I have learned most of these tips from experience. I have run into some rather interesting sites by not knowing these things. This should save some from much frustration.