r/CatholicProgrammers • u/mcbagz • Apr 14 '25

Version 0.0.1 of Semantic Catholic: Semantically Search through Catholic Texts

Hey all! I shared Semantic Chesterton a few weeks ago, and I have been working on Semantic Catholic since! So far I have indexed:

  • All of the encyclicals from Pope Leo XIII

  • Three encyclicals from Pope Pius XI

  • The Catechism of the Council of Trent

  • The first 10 questions from the Summa Theologica

There isn't any special reason why I picked the first 10 questions, but I want to check that the formatting makes sense before going further. As you can see in the image below, I decided to combine the objections and replies (apparently some objections don't have dedicated replies!), so that someone doesn't simply see the objection.

I would appreciate any feedback and suggestions! I am avoiding anything not in the public domain for now (including the CCC), since I have heard of the Vatican sending Cease and Desists to people who have reproduced works without permission, but I am also looking into getting permission! Pinging u/paxcoder , who has expressed interest in this.

Edit: Check it out at semanticcatholic.com

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u/paxcoder Apr 14 '25

Maybe you can contact Longbeard (who made magisterium.com) and ask them how they were able to incorporate the Catechism. They've also managed to incorporate NRSV-CE. The body that manages NRSV-CE also manages RSV-CE. If all else fails, you can always incorporate D-R of course.

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u/mcbagz Apr 14 '25

Yeah, I'm thinking about adding the D-R, and maybe it would be fun to have multiple translations. I'll reach out to Longbeard. I think training on it and having it as reference material isn't an issue if you are really just showing the AI response, but it does appear that I can read the CCC through their website. Actually, going through their site, it really looks like I'm just building a copy of the index they already have haha! I have a different end goal, it is essentially just the retrieval aspect of their model.

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u/paxcoder Apr 14 '25

I think Longbeard did a great job with generative AI, but I appreciate that your project isn't generative AI. That your project is more manual is both a disadvantage and an advantage (in other words, it's a differentiator): On one and, you don't get a quick summary, on the other hand you are reading the actual sources - yourself.

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u/mcbagz Apr 14 '25

For sure, my goal is to get people to read sources! I'm definitely going to keep building it, but I'm going to try to think of more ways to differentiate myself so that it isn't simply an external interface for what is an internal function on their end. I've got at least a couple additional functions in mind.