Foundation
The Catholic Dispatch is an Internet Apostolate founded by the layman, J. Lawrence Case in 1996. The original intent was to offer free articles on various Catholic subjects to those who desired to receive them via electronic mail. These (mostly originally-authored) articles were well received, and the amount of subscribers grew into the thousands over the course of several years.

Objective
The obvious crisis in the Catholic Church revealed a great need for people to take their faith seriously. Our “dispatches” were designed to teach people about aspects of Catholicism, while helping to show how rich, varied and deeply interesting Christ’s religion is. One way of obtaining this objective was to be sure to always maintain the traditional understanding in matters of Catholic doctrine, which is so sorely being attacked in this day and age.

Web sites
In order to help gain subscribers, the apostolate set up a web site, at first designed on the free hosting Geocities, and then on an Earthlink host (in order to avoid the pop-up ads on Geocities). In 1998 the apostolate moved to its own domain . The web site has gone through several Web incarnations.

Articles
The articles sent via email were mostly written on timeless subjects so that the interest and information would not expire, but always be enjoyed when reading again and again. Many of these articles are still posted on the Web in various places. A Google search for the unique keywords “catholic dispatch” will reveal that many are still posted.

Change in Operations
Our objective will never change, but it is now becoming more focused and specialized. As the administrative burden and increasing ISP rules due to spam have made it too difficult to maintain mass emailings, attention to a Web site presence has become more important. This Web presence has in recent years taken a hiatus partly due to economic circumstances, and partly due to spam and unsatisfactory Web hosting. This has now changed.

Specialization
Although teaching general fundamentals in Catholicism has its place, the needs of our time, and the slow moving progress to supply for these needs requires a specialized focus. Catholicism is in an emergency state of crisis, and this is primarily due to the spread of heresy since the 1960’s. Just as it is customary for religious orders to specialize in a particular work, the Catholic Dispatch Apostolate will focus especially on the issues and controversies which pertain to so-called “Traditionalists”, that is, the various groups attempting to dedicate themselves to obeying St. Paul’s command,

“brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle.” (2 Thess. 2:14)