I don’t know about the history of the Church, but I do know that the word has been used for the handing out of legitimate and accurate information on a paper medium as a way of spreading awareness when one is censored by the State and cannot use the normal channels, and it has been used this way for a long long time before the use of it to mean the same as “lies” was popular.
Propaganda was originally a branch of the Catholic Church, so the connotation is that it’s as full of crap and dishonesty as apologetics.
I don’t know about the history of the Church, but I do know that the word has been used for the handing out of legitimate and accurate information on a paper medium as a way of spreading awareness when one is censored by the State and cannot use the normal channels, and it has been used this way for a long long time before the use of it to mean the same as “lies” was popular.