PEORIA, Ill.—The stream of writings proclaiming the errors and evils of Catholicism that began flowing on Oct. 31, 1517 — the day Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany — has in recent years splayed into an ever-expanding network of electronic tributaries.

The Internet's growth as a 24-hour, low-cost global forum for ideas has caught the attention of anti-Catholic groups and individuals, many of whom believe they have found the perfect medium for delivering the reasoning and rhetoric they hope will lead Catholics out of the Church.

Even a casual keyword search of the Web will turn up hundreds of sites promoting anti-Catholic messages. Many of them are linked to one another in Web rings; the “Bible Challenge for Catholics” ring, for example, lists 148 sites. (For pro-Catholic sites, good starting points are CatholiCity.com and www.envoymagazine.com/-frameset_links.html.)

Though anti-Catholic sites share the common goal of refuting the Catholic faith, they vary greatly in character and focus. For example, on the “Bible Challenge for Catholics” ring, a Protestant professor's scholarly critique of the 1995 document “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” is neighbor to the ramblings of a conspiracy theorist who claims the Vatican, Freemasonry and international Communism are joined in a plot to quell “Bible Christianity.”

Most of these sites, however, fall somewhere along a continuum between these two extremes. Ranging in scope and presentation from one-page, graphics-free tracts to professionally designed supersites, they tend to quote a lot of Scripture (and very little from Catholic teaching texts) and are burning with zeal to rescue souls from a “religious system” of “empty rituals that obscure the Gospel” of Jesus Christ.

‘Works of Darkness’?

“I do what I do because the Scriptures command me,” said Greg Loren Durand, a Mississippi author who has been practicing Biblical apologetics since 1986. Durand's Web sites contain sections dealing with subjects as diverse as Freemasonry and capital punishment, but it's clear the main focus of his attention is the Catholic faith — and demonstrating how his brand of Calvinism represents the true, historic Christianity that must oppose “heretical Rome.”

Asked via e-mail what motivates his efforts, Durand cited Ephesians 5:11 — “Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness; rather expose them.”

Presbyterians, Baptists, Adventists and nondenominational groups, plus pseudo-Christians such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons often have no kinder words for each other than they do for Catholics.

“This is merely extreme Protestantism working itself out,” says Mark Brumley, managing editor of The Catholic Faith and Catholic Dossier magazines and himself a convert from evangelicalism. “Sola scriptura [the Reformation principle of doctrinal authority coming from ‘Scripture alone’], divorced from any binding ecclesiastical body, produces division.” Since active, vocal anti-Catholics tend to be the most vehement adherents to that principle, he said, “it makes sense that they would be divided among themselves.”

The chip-on-the-shoulder combativeness of the Free Grace Homepage can tempt one to dismiss it and many similar sites as the work of a fringe element. But this underestimates their impact.

22,000 ‘Hits’

Free Grace's home page, just one among hundreds, indicates more than 22,000 “hits,” or visits to the site since it first went up. The arguments they present frequently border on the absurd, yet they often contain enough Bible verses, historical references and appeals to logic to present the appearance of reasonableness.

Just as Internet pornography is now enticing individuals who would never enter an “adult” bookstore, Internet anti-Catholicism has the potential to dismay and confuse Catholics who have never picked up a tract at an airport or paid much heed to a door-to-door missionary.

The good news is, there is a flip side to all this.

“The Internet goes places that we physically are not able to go ourselves; if I write something evangelistic in nature, it may be seen by someone on the other side of the planet,” said James Akin, whose award-winning site, the Nazareth Resource Library (www.cin.org/users/james), provides essays on theology and apologetics as well as the “Nazareth Master Catechism,” a doctrinally cross-linked text of five historical Catholic catechisms.

“Knocking on doors is not as effective as it was 100 years ago,” added Akin, a staff apologist at San Diego-based Catholic Answers. “But the Internet goes into people's homes. They will read something off a Web page that they wouldn't listen to if you came to their door.”

The digital medium not only provides a means of publishing information on a global scale, but it also makes personal contact and debate possible — via e-mail and bulletin boards and in “real time” chat rooms.

“Cyberspace has given Catholics and anti-Catholics a greater opportunity to network amongst themselves and discuss the arguments put forth from both sides,” said David Keene, who runs the Catholic Apologetics Network site (members.xoom.com/dkeene/).

“It is crucial to the Church's mission to preach the Gospel to the whole world,” Keene observed. “Where else can you talk to so many people from so many lands?”

Todd M. Aglialoro writes from Peoria, Illinois.