Site Seeing - David
Palm
Two Super Sites, and a SUPER Super Site
Your road map for exploring Catholic
Web sites on the information superhighway.
Biblical Evidence for Catholicism
http://ic.net/~erasmus
Dave Armstrong's Biblical Evidence For Catholicism is personally one of
my favorite Web sites.
The opening screen to Biblical Evidence is emblazoned with a Celtic
Cross, inspired by Armstrong's Celtic ancestry. Just beyond is the main
page, sporting links to a host of interesting topics, including the
Papacy, Scripture and Tradition, Mary, the Church, Progressive
Creationism, and the Eucharist. Each of these sections contains some
very fine original essays by Armstrong. I find Dave's writing
consistently lucid, penetrating and extremely helpful. I think you will,
too. To round out each subject, Dave has included intelligently-selected
links to related information on the Web. The aspiring apologist could
use Biblical Evidence as "home base" to acquire a very robust
self-guided instruction in Catholic apologetics.
Also included are quotes of the week from G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis,
Malcolm Muggeridge and Thomas Howard. Several great Catholic thinkers
get their own sections, complete with copious links to their works and
related information on the Web.
Each section contains an amazing wealth of links, and one could spend a
great many days exploring these fertile fields.
The New Advent Catholic Supersite
http://www.sni.net/advent
The New Advent site is truly a gold mine for the Catholic interested in
learning more about the Faith. Unlike many sites, New Advent does not
overwhelm one with myriad options; everything is accessed from a single,
tidy home page. But the information that lies behind that page is
formidable.
One can conveniently access some excellent questions and answers on the
Catholic Faith, including some taken from the classic apologetics work
Radio Replies. There is also a fine collection of the writings of the
early Church Fathers in electronic format. And St. Thomas Aquinas'
magisterial Summa Theologica is also available for on-line use.
But the sine qua non of the New Advent site is without a doubt the
Catholic Encyclopedia. Through the efforts of dozens of volunteers, the
articles of this Catholic masterwork are being rendered in electronic
format. This massive reference was written in a day when scholars were
proud to be Catholic, and they give robust treatments of their various
topics without pulling any punches. For many of us, the Catholic
Encyclopedia is a first stop when researching any question on the Faith.
New Advent does us all a great service by placing this valuable information on
the Web.
The Holy See
http://www.vatican.va
After a long delay, the Vatican's Web site is finally on-line.
Appropriately enough for the Catholic Church, the Holy See's site opens
with a choice of six different languages. While not extremely colorful,
the site is visually appealing, being set on a parchment-like background
with all sections accessible through "tabs" set on the main
screen.
In the Holy Father section, one finds biographical information on
current and past popes and some papal documents. In the Roman Curia
section, one finds documents from the various Pontifical Councils,
Congregations, Pontifical Commissions and other Vatican offices. All
well and good, but it seems the information here is not kept up to date.
For example, there was nothing from the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith on this office's pronouncement on women's ordination.
Similarly, one drools at the prospect of the massive and priceless
holdings of the Vatican Library being available on-line, but the Archive
section falls well short of that. So far, there is only a useful
collection of the Vatican II documents, an on-line Catechism of the
Catholic Church that doesn't yet work, and an equally inaccessible
Crossing the Threshold of Hope.
The categories on the Holy See's site offer great promise, but it seems
it'll be awhile before that promise is fully realized.
Also be sure to check out David Palm's Web site at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/djpalm.
