Butler's Original Lives - Vol. 6 - October & November - Ebook - 954 pages
Volume 6 of Butler’s Lives covers the months of October and November. Putting these invaluable books together in a new and modern format has been a joy for us. We hope that you are enjoying them. Vol. 6 at 954 pages is the largest. Some of the longest treatises are contained in it and these two months are very rich in the sanctoral cycle and full of famous saints.
A great man once said that “History is the laboratory of Wisdom.” And where do we find the best history? It is found in the lives of the saints, for it is through their lives on earth, lived within the union of Christ’s mystical body, the Catholic Church, that we see the only history thattruly matters for all eternity.
This spectacular history by Fr. Alban Butler, The Lives of the Saints, presents to the reader the life story of over 1600 saints and their times. In the original introduction we find this bold statement:
“It is on this account we have ventured to designate The Lives of the Saints an historical supplement to theOld and New Testaments. We think this work deserves to be so considered, on account of the close resemblance it bears to the historical portions of holy writ. Let the divine economy, in this respect, be for a moment the subject ofthe reader’s consideration.”Loreto Publications has here reproduced the finest original edition of the text from the early 19th century with no modernization, alterations, deletions, or additions to the product of Father Butler.
Father Alban Butler was born in 1710, at Appletree, Northamptonshire, the second son of Simon Butler, Esq. Orphaned at the age of eight, he was sent to be educated at the English College, Douay, in France. In 1735, Butler was ordained a priest. At Douay, he was appointed professor of philosophy, and later professor of theology. It was at Douay, he began his principal work The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints. He also prepared material for Richard Challoner’s Memoirs of Missionary Priests, a work on the martyrs of the reign of Elizabeth. He labored for some time as a missionary priest in Staffordshire, and was finally appointed president of the English seminary at Saint Omer in France, where he remained till his death in 1773.
vitis Sanctorum
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Rev. Alban Butler's ORIGINAL Lives of the Saints Vol. 7
December plus Appendices etc. - Ebook - Illustrated -632 pages
Very few published works require such a lengthy explanation of exactly WHICH edition is being offered, in what format, and why, than Fr. Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints. The reason is that there are so many very different books being printed under this author’s name and under this title due to it’s long history (the work is almost 300 years old) and its universal popularity. Few catholic books except the Bible, the Confessions, the Imitation, and the Summa, are as widely read. This book has also been extensively revised, altered, and updated since its original publication, with new editions, even 21st century revisions being made, that we feel the time is ripe for an original, unexpurgated, and unrevised print version to be made available.This edition is widely considered to be the most complete and authoritative ever issued. It is the 1854 edition of D. J. Sadlier of New York, and in the Preface it gives its “pedigree.” The original was printed anonymously in London in 1759, after 30 years work on the project. The edition published by Sadlier is an exact replica of the Dublin and London edition of 1833. Being a scholarly work, but also a work deeply imbued with the piety and devotion of a priest’s lifetime effort, it is loaded with footnotes which comprise a significant proportion of the total text. In the original book, the footnotes were printed in such a small, closely-set typeface, that they were almost unreadable.Loreto Publications has utilized the recent development of OCR scanning to extract the original text and to put it into a modern, highly readable, and much larger font typeface than any of the old editions. We have extensively proofread the text thus generated, and have made the layout “user friendly” as the moderns so succinctly state. In addition, our already available edition of Butler’s Little Pictorial Lives—which is a drastic abridgment of this original edition to one volume, illustrated, with one saint and one image for each day of the year—has provided us with 365 beautiful 19th century engravings which we have added to this original un-illustrated text. Loreto has made a few corrections of obvious typographical errors and has slightly altered some capitalization rubrics and some spellings, but we have has refrained from alterations to the text. We think that modern readers are not so uneducated as to need the work “updated” for them, either as to content or style, since the beautiful expressiveness of Butler’s 18th century grammatical and rhetorical mastery is not so far removed historically as to render it unintelligible to any ordinary 21st century reader. We are certain that our readers will appreciate the original work for its piety, beauty, and comprehensive scholarship.
Ebook (epub, mobi, pdf) - The Golden Chain Of St. Thomas Aquinas - CATHOLIC EDITION
Volume I: Commentary on St. Matthew
There has never been a Catholic version of the Catena Aurea published in English until now. Using in-line citations, Douay-Rheims biblical texts, modern easy-to-read fonts, and supplying updated (including on-line source) references to original documents, Loreto has produced the first Catholic edition of the invaluable commentaries of the Fathers and Doctors collected by Saint Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century.
We have been working on this project sporadically as time permitted us for several years. This edition far surpasses all of the protestant versions available from other Catholic publishers.
Fr. Walter Farrell, O. P. - Ebook (epub, mobi, pdf) 408 pages
This magnificent set of four books is an exposition and guide to the entire Summa of Saint Thomas Aquinas. It was written by one of the premier Dominican Thomistic scholars who were active in the scholastic revival of the 1930s and 40s. These books contain the entire Summa transposed into modern English prose, thereby making accessible, for those who are not trained philosophers, the complete theology of Saint Thomas’s Summa. The composition of these four books matches up perfectly with each of the 614 questions of the Summa. This book is meant to be read alongside the actual Summa in order to make it more easily understood by the average reader.Volume OneThis volume attempts to put in popular form St. Thomas’ masterly study of God, man, and the world in the Prima Pars of his Summa Theologica. His study is of extreme pertinence to our times precisely because we are the victims of a constantly increasing intellectual confusion. We have become more and more timid about digging beneath the surface of life, more and more emphatic about a knowledge of facts, less and less concerned with the wisdom of beginnings and ends. To put it baldly, we have concentrated more and more on the physical world and less and less on man and on God. The fact is, however, that exclusive concentration on a study of the world does not unearth the important truths about the world; an exclusive consideration of man and the world results in a blurred, distorted vision of both. We have tried to know only the world and remained most ignorant of it; to know only man and the world and have become entangled in a mass of meaningless detail. For the world is intelligible only in terms of man and God; man is intelligible only in terms of God; God is intelligible only in terms of Himself.
Fr. Walter Farrell, O. P. -ebook (epub, mobi, pdf) 412 pages
Volume TwoThere is a need felt by those who, having heard enough of St. Thomas to whet their appetite, suddenly discover that they cannot go directly to St. Thomas without the guidance of a professor; and for most of them the leisure days of the classroom are over forever.This, then, is the double purpose of this book: to furnish a rational defense of his faith for the ordinary Catholic and to open St. Thomas to the layman who has no professional philosophical or theological knowledge. It is not, then, intended only for the very learned, nor for a textbook. If it must be described in a phrase, it might best be called an easy guidebook to St. Thomas’s greatest work.Just as a guidebook to Paris can be best evaluated in the streets of Paris, so this guide book to the Summa can be best appreciated in the pages of the Summa, by comparing the individual chapters of the book with the corresponding questions of the Prima Secundae (First Part of the Second Part) of St. Thomas’ Summa, questions that are given at the head of each chapter. Any particularly striking point will be found more fully and more beautifully developed in the Summa itself; further proofs, explanations, and illustrations can all be had directly from St. Thomas.It is important to remember that it is the Summa reduced to popular language and not merely another book about St. Thomas or about the Summa. In fact, it is often more than that, for, particularly on difficult questions, the parallel passages in other works of St. Thomas have been freely used where the conciseness of the Summa might have caused some obscurity for one not wholly familiar with the thought of Thomas.
Father Farrell’s four-part Companion to the Summa has been responsible for much of the renewed interest in Thomism in the United States. It is required reading for many Catholic college students and “unrequired reading” for thousands of other lovers of St. Thomas.Its author was born in Chicago in 1902. He attended Dominican schools and was ordained in the Dominican order in 1927, then going to the University of Fribourg for his S.T.D. degree. In 1940 he was awarded the seldom given Dominican honor of the Master of Sacred Theology degree. He served as a Navy chaplain during World War II and was then stationed at the Dominican Houses of Studies in Washington, D. C. and River Forest, Illinois until his death in 1951.
Fr. Walter Farrell, O. P. - ebook (epub, mobi, pdf) 464 pages
Volume ThreeOriginally, Fr. Farrell published Vol. Two and Vol. Three before Volumes One and Four. Chesterton, in his Saint Thomas Aquinas, has explained both my order of publication and the title of this volume. “He (Thomas) did, with a most solid and colossal conviction, believe in Life; and in something like what Stevenson called the great theorem of the livableness of life.… The medievals had put many restrictions, and some excessive restrictions, upon the universal human hunger and even fury for life.... Never until modern thought began, did they really have to fight with men who desired to die. That horror had threatened them in Asiatic Albigensianism, but it never became normal to them—until now.” The whole second part of the Summa, covered by Vols. two and three, deals precisely with the living of human life, the invaluable meaning of that life, and the secrets of the fullest success in the living of it. This part was published first, had to be published first, because of that unholy, perverted eagerness of modern men to throw away their lives and to discard their humanity. This is St. Thomas’ superb defense of the humanity of man. The remaining volumes of this work plumb the depths and scale the heights of the unutterable truths, the mysterious beginnings and glorious goals, that interpenetrate that human life with something of divinity, the truths that are the ultimate explanations of its incredible significance. This is not a book about the Summa, but the Summa itself reduced to popular language; and Thomas is not read in a day or a year, nor can we suffer an introduction to him, shake hands and then dismiss him from our lives. If we make the happy mistake of so much as smiling at him, he moves bag and baggage into our minds, to become an increasingly more delightful intimate as the years move on.
Fr. Walter Farrell, O. P. -ebook (epub, mobi, pdf) 430 pages
Volume FourSt. Thomas died too soon to finish his book, the Summa Theologica. Not all authors are so fortunate. This book marks the completion of a series, projected long ago perhaps with an eye to Thomas’ good fortune. The first was a search for the ultimate answers that form the bedrock of human life, human action, and the living of human life; the second furnished the key to human life and human action; the third concentrated on the living of human life in all its exuberant fullness; this, the fourth, traces the royal road a man’s feet must walk and the goals that await him at the end of the journey. It was the Son of God Who declared. “I am the way”; this book takes His words literally, as they were meant to be taken. Its subject matter, then, is the sublime mystery by which the Son of God became man to lead men to God, the mystery of the Incarnation. It does not stop at an examination of the mystery but goes on to trace all the consequences of God’s dwelling among men: the life of Christ, detail by detail; His blessed mother; the continuation of His life in the sacraments; and the goal of heaven which is at the end of the royal road, the goal of hell which is the terminal of any other path. From beginning to end, this book deals with the supernatural, and that without apology, excuse, or defense; all this has been taken care of in previous volumes. Its contents are thus not so much an argued thesis as a divinely stated fact. If a modern reader is avid of facts, he will find a sublime diet of divine facts here; if, however, he is fastidious in the matter of facts, particularly supernatural facts, this diet may well prove too much for him. It was not, however, for the fastidious, but for those who were hungry for God that these books were written. If they do something to stave off starvation from those who have the courage to admit their hunger, Thomas may be pardoned for not having seen to it that they were not finished, and I may be forgiven for the effrontery that began them. Again, I wish to express my gratitude to Thomas for the good things in these books, and to my critics that the bad things are not worse.
The Golden Chain Of St. Thomas Aquinas - CATHOLIC EDITION- Ebook (kindle, epub, pdf)
Volume II: Commentary on St. Mark and St. Luke
The Golden Chain Of St. Thomas Aquinas - CATHOLIC EDITION - Ebook (pdf, kindle, epub)
Volume III: Commentary on St. John
Ebook files: mobi, epub, and pdf
Sr. Mary Concilia O'Brien - Hardcover - 478 pages
This brilliantly concieved and executed textbook was published for Catholic High School & College students. It was published in 1941 and it is still one of the clearest and succinct summaries of Catholic Social teaching. It draws primarily on the teaching of St. Thomas in the Summa and the papal encyclicals of Leo III and Pius XI. There are chapter summaries, questions for further discussion, lists of primary sources quoted, an extensive index, and suggested reading for advanced students. This is an invaluable resource for neophytes in the study of the Church's social doctrines.
She has inspired the greatest artists, poets and composers for two-thousand years. Armies have fought under her banner, while entire cities and nations have placed themselves under her patronage and protection. Every day, she is called upon by countless men, women and children to help them in their necessities: "Hail Mary, Full of Grace." She is the Mother of Jesus Christ . . . The Mother of God.
Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary is, perhaps, the most instantly recognizable manifestation of the Roman Catholic Faith. Those outside the Church are hard-pressed to explain it, and they too often view Marian devotion as either a "distraction" from the adoration due to Jesus Christ, or as something "acceptable," but only to a severely limited extent. In reality, the Church's Marian heritage is an integral part of the ancient Faith, and there can be no proper understanding of the Person of Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, without a proper appreciation of, and respect for, the Catholic Church's Marian teachings.
Distributist Perspectives is a collection of essays by leading thinkers of the school of English Distributists that in the 1920s and 1930s articulated a humane vision of social and economic life based upon the Social Doctrine of the Church. Subtitled "Essays on the Economics of Justice and Charity," and including essays by Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton, George Maxwell, Harold Robbins, Cdr. Herbert Shove, H. J. Massingham, and Eric Gill, this first collection of Distributist writings serves as an introduction to the depth and coherence of the Distributist position on such essential topics as the nature of work, the role of tradition, the dangers of industrialism, and the importance to the family and the State of the widespread distribution of ownership of productive property. Volume I of the series offers a rare glimpse through true, primary source material, of the seriousness and persuasiveness of the critique of modernity by some of the finest English Catholic minds of last century. This first volume of Distributist Perspectives also offers a newly edited edition of the Distributist Manifesto, written by Arthur J. Penty for the Distributist League in 1937.
Reminiscences of Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity A Carmelite Nun of Dijon 1901-1906
Elizabeth was given the name of the Holy Trinity for her consecrated life in the Carmel of Dijon. In here writings, hovere, she referred to herself as "the Praise of Glory" (Ephesians 1:12) on account of her special gift of penetrating the sublime truths in the epistles of St. Paul. So abundantly fruitful was the life of God in here that she seemed to reflect in here every act the eternal processions of His Truth and Love. Saint Elizabeth has been called "another Thérèse".
A clarion call to solve current societal ills... in light of the Faith[.] Anthony Cooney
A compact and compelling look at the usefulness of the medieval guild and the broader political theory underlying it for a solution to the age-old and still perplexing problem of the struggle between capital and labor and the economic tension between cooperation and competition. A clarion call to solve current societal ills, such as unemployment, absentee corporate ownership, and employee disenfranchisement, in light of the medieval Faith.
A remarkable survey of the ability of the Catholic Church to surmount crises posed by civil society while maintaining its nature unchanged. Kurth, a leading Belgian historian of the late 19th and early 20th century, condenses 2,000 years of peace, turbulence, and resolve into a fast-paced, afternoon read.
Brother Francis Memorial Edition The three articles by Fr. Gallitzin included here were originally published in sequence over a period of several years. The first, A Defense of Catholic Principles, was published in response to a public sermon of a protestant clergyman who used the occasion to attack the Church. The second, An Appeal to the Protestant Public, was published after the clergyman responded with a public Vindication of his remarks and accusations, which utterly failed to address Gallitzins Defense. One of the results of this exchange was that a friendship developed between Gallitzin and another protestant minister who eventually converted. It became clear to Gallitzin that any attempt to convince protestants of the truths of the Faith must depend for its effectiveness, not upon appeals to authority or tradition, but rather to scripture. This he did in hisLetter to a Protestant Friend on the Holy Scriptures. All three articles are masterful, manly, and effective. Many protestants converted. We are pleased to make these writings available to a new generation of Catholic evangelists. 290 pages - PB $15.95
Dom Jacques Houlier - PB – 80 PagesThis beautiful and contemplative book, reflecting upon the characteristics of Gregorian chant that have attracted the attention of so many: its permanence, beauty, and history, as well as its liturgical, sacred, and philosophical qualities is well worth spending some time with.
First Exarch of the Russian Catholic Church - PB 278 pages
By the inscrutable designs of divine providence, during the fateful year of 1917, when Our Lady appeared at Fatima, there were two events that also occurred in Russia. The very first Catholic Exarch (a bishop approved by, and under the direct jurisdiction of, the See of Peter) for the Russian Catholic Church was named. He was Blessed Leonid Feodorov. The other event was of course the Revolution, accomplished by Kerensky and Lenin in two stages, that turned over the vast Russian Empire of the Romanovs to a clique of anti-Christian persecutors. Holy Mother Russia (and the whole world) has suffered greatly from this Revolution, and both still suffer from the scars and effects of it.The message(s) of Fatima, given both in 1917 and in subsequent apparitions to Sr. Lucia dos Santos, show Heaven’s concern with Holy Mother Russia and her errors and her coming conversion. The conversion refers of course to the end of Russia’s first and most fundamental “error”—her separation from the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church under the Vicar of Christ. The holy reunion that the Mother of God desires (and demands) is the perfection of the Orthodox Church of Russia that is to be accomplished by a miracle of Grace resulting from the Consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart by the Pope and all of the Bishops in union with Peter. The erection of the Exarchate by Pope St. Pius X and Pope Benedict XV set the pattern for proper and fruitful reunion of the Orthodox. The holy life of the first Exarch, Blessed Leonid Feodorov (and his only successor Blessed Klymentiy Sheptytskyi, who died in 1951) established the norm that all should look to who pray and work for the successful reunion of the two Churches as Heaven wishes. The Exarchate has been extinguished since 1951, but we believe that its resurrection is only a matter of time, and that its previous existence, and the life of Blessed Leonid, remain as divine signposts on the path of the most glorious and fruitful reunion that is to come.
For more information on Leonid Feodorov see the wonderful article here.
Father Denis Fahey - PB - 146 pages
“I repeatedly promised Saint Peter that if I ever got the chance, I would teach the truth about his Master in the way he and his successors, the Roman Pontiffs, wanted it done. That is what I have striven to do and am doing.” —Rev. Denis Fahey
Secret Societies and the Kingship of Christ is a collection of twelve articles that were written by Fr. Fahey and published in The Catholic Bulletin in 1928, the year after he published his first book Mental Prayer According to the Principles of Saint Thomas. Fr. Fahey’s formative educational years coincided with the pontificate of that implacable foe of modernism, St. Pius X , the successor of Leo XIII who had spoken out so stridently against the sect of Freemasonry and naturalism. Attentive to the needs of the Church in his time, Fr. Fahey followed the Leonine instructions given in Humanum Genus article 31; “We wish it to be your rule first of all to tear away the mask from Freemasonry, and to let it be seen as it really is…”This book is a short, but thoroughly researched and footnoted introduction the the subject of Secret Societies and their impact on the Church, Christian civilization, and modern history.
On September 23, 1968 after having borne the stigmata for exactly 50 years, the saintly Padre Pio died. This holy mystic spent his life as a living imitation of Christ and is the only priest in history to bear the stigmata. During his life, in spite of the physical pain he endured, Fr. Pio continued to say his daily Mass. But part of his suffering was unknown. Fr. Pio wrote a petition appealing directly to Pope Paul VI so as to obtain permission, from the highest ecclesiastical authority on earth, to never be required to say the Novus Ordo Missae.
The existence of this petition was kept secret from the public . . . until now.
Things to learn about this holy friar:
“Later, as an aged Capuchin friar, the mere thought of the liturgical reform, which would take effect in 1969, was sufficient to raise in him a holy horror. Throughout his life the holy friar had been obedient even unto martyrdom, but at this time the only request he dared to put forth to the authorities of the Church was to be exempted from the novelties of the impending liturgical reform.”
For the first time published in English read the startling testimony and eyewitness accounts of close friends and spiritual sons of Padre Pio as they reveal his thoughts on the sanctity of the Mass, the changes occurring in the Church during his lifetime, and the chilling effects they would have on the future. Look behind the cloister wall and discover a side of Padre Pio you’ve never seen before.
216 pages. Softcover. Photographs.
By Fanchon Royer - PB - 304 pages
Miguel Pro was born in 1891. He was the third of eleven children, four of whom had died as infants or young children. He entered the Jesuit novitiate at El Llano on August 15, 1911, was ordained in 1925, and executed in 1927. In 1952—just 25 years later—his cause came up for beatification and he was beatified by Pope John Paul II on September 25, 1988. At the time of Padre Pro’s death, Mexico was under rule of the fiercely anti-clerical and anti-catholic President Plutarch Elias Calles who had begun what writer Graham Greene called the “fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth.” During those years of the Masonic-Communist persecution, the Mexican people rose up in a great war to defend their nation and the rights of the Church and of Christ the King. Their battle-cry was Viva Christo Rey! Blessed Padre Pro’s martyrdom came at the height of the war and it typifies the period of the Cristero rebellion and its heroes. He took no part in the war, but spent his life ministering to the poor and faithful Mexicans.
He was one of the earliest combatants of communism and a pioneer “priest worker.” While observing the Mexican miners’ needs as assistant to his father, a mine operator, he first recognized his vocation. After entering the Society of Jesus, and spending time in Belgium and Spain for studies, he fell into the company of priests and seminarians who were preparing the way for the apostolate to the worker. When he returned to Mexico at the height of the anti-Catholic persecution, his was a mission to the laborers and to the poorest Mexicans.
Dom Prosper Guéranger Abbot of Solesmes Translated from the French Third Edition by Michael J. Miller
When nineteenth century Christendom shifted its allegiance from a divine vertical authority to the horizontal revolutionary ideals of egalitarian democracy and false liberty, Dom Guéranger’s erudite polemical masterpiece contributed more than any other contemporary work to uphold the papal monarchy in all of its divinely ordained prerogatives. This labor of the holy abbot helped to restore in Catholic Europe the spiritual sword, as well as the magisterial cathedra, to the Vicar of Christ the King. And he did so, not by any clever manipulative abuse of language, but simply by appealing to the simplicity and clarity of the gospels, universal Christian tradition, and the common consensus fidelis. The brilliant hypothetical scenario, drawn by the author, of a college of a dozen apostles, called by Christ, but without a “Cephas” (a Rock) in Peter and his successors, presents even the infant “collegial” church in such an unenviable plight that one might pity them even more than one might pity the Methodists or Seventh Day Adventists, had any of them been at the marriage feast of Cana.
