The Golden Chain Of St. Thomas Aquinas - CATHOLIC EDITION
3 Volume Set Commentary on the Four Gospels
Vol. 1 Matthew, Vol. 2 Mark & Luke, Vol. 3 John
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.
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Translated by Mario DiTata During his lifetime St. Francis wrote many books and innumerable letters of spiritual advice. He was known far and wide as the best spiritual director of his day. He converted seventy-two thousand Calvinists back to the Catholic Faith. Introduction to the Devout Life is one of his most widely known works. This compilation of gems of wisdom from this great Doctor of souls is a small tribute to his genius and sanctity and a book from you will derive much consolation.
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By Dom Prosper Guéranger - PB - 404 pages
In the nineteenth century there was a concerted effort on the part of liberal revisionists to undermine the Church’s history by challenging the veracity of the Acts of the Martyrs. Some miraculous events associated with the lives of very popular saints, whose names were canonized in the Roman Missal, were treated with ridicule by scholars more concerned with documents than the living evidence of common tradition. It was righteous indignation that moved Abbot Dom Guéranger to defend the cause of Saint Cecilia, whose holy celebrity had spanned fifteen centuries. The abbot’s strategy was to validate the traditional accounts of all the martyrs’ lives by exonerating just one. He achieved this in the holy virgin Cecilia’s case by presenting in book form every morsel of factual evidence available, especially that which modern archeological excavations offered. As a result of his labor, there arose a refreshing new devotion to the young martyr, and – at least for a time — the cynical scoffs of the proud were silenced. This particular biography was written in response to the request of his co-reformer and friend, the Benedictine Abbess Cécile Bruyère.
Prospér Louis Pascal Guéranger was born in France, in 1805, at Sablé-sur-Sarthe. In the Napoleonic era, 1827, during the continued anti-clerical aftermath of the French Revolution, he was ordained a parish priest. As a young curé he authored several works on church-state relations. In 1836, having purchased an abandoned priory that was for sale in Solesmes, he and five other parish priests took solemn vows as Benedictines, with the intention of restoring the monastic life in France according to the ancient rule of Saint Benedict. Until his death there in 1875, Abbot Dom Guéranger devoted himself to restoring the cenobitical life as originally cultured thirteen centuries earlier by the father of western monasticism. He did much by his writings and prayers to keep the church in France loyal to the person of the Sovereign Pontiff and away from the dangers of both Gallicanism and Jansenism.
Cornelius a Lapide created a Scripture Commentary so complete and scholarly that it was practically the universal commentary in use by Catholics (often available only in 30 some Latin volumes) for hundreds of years. As part of the mission of Loreto Publications apostolate we have spent a lot of time and money over the last four years to produce a translation and design a beautiful edition of this priceless commentary so long hidden from the eyes of most Catholics. Now is your opportunity to own this masterpiece.
For an additional fee, customers can have access to an online version of the book. Detailed information and free samples are available from the online edition of a Lapide.
Note: If you have already purchased the books, and wish to purchase online access, contact us.
If you would like to purchase only the online edition ($40.00), you can do so here.
This set boasts the following features:
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Saint John Eudes - 334 pages - PDF onlyOne of the most prolific ascetical writers of the seventeenth century, Saint John Eudes was an inexhaustible reservoir of holy wisdom and devotional fervor. Loreto Publications considers it a foremost priority to help make the spiritual doctrine of this great apostle of devotion to the Sacred and Admirable Hearts of Jesus and Mary more widely known. Perhaps no book of his better exemplifies that profoundly incarnational doctrine than The Admirable Heart of Mary. Eudes reveals to his disciples this most pure and maternal of all hearts both in its corporal and spiritual pulsations, while demonstrating with a dozen unforgettable natural and scriptural analogies, how this human heart was so inexhaustibly divinized by the one Divine Heart of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The Admirable Heart of Mary was given to us from the Cross by Jesus Christ. Truly this heart was the first-fruit of His Passion, given to all of Marys children, that it might be honored, cherished, invoked and, ultimately, with that of her Son, reproduced in them. This is the essence of the spirituality of Saint John Eudes.
By Professor Roberto de Mattei - Paperback - 444 pages
Few Catholic writers have been as prolific as University of Rome Professor Roberto de Mattei. Over decades he has produced a wealth of incisive analyses about the Catholic world’s collapse and charted an authoritative path back to health and sanity.
He has now written an exceedingly compelling and powerful biography of Pope Pius V, widely recognized as one of the boldest and most courageous popes of the past millennium, who decisively defeated the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Lepanto and fought head-on the Protestant Reformation, which had assailed the Church.
The life of every Christian is a battle, and St. Pius V offers us a luminous example of leadership in a time of trial. In these pages, you’ll learn:
You’ll also learn of Pope Pius V’s remarkable spiritual life and regimen, his foresight and prudence in dealing with the iconoclastic fury of the Huguenots in France, and the way he handled the trials of excommunicated heretics and reformed the rotting religious orders of his day.
Professor de Mattei makes clear that Pope Pius V was so effective and so holy that no pontificate can be judged accurately without measuring it against his. In page after fascinating page, he shows contemporary Catholics what it means to be “a great pope” or “a saintly bishop.” Here, at last, is the complete life and times of one of the Church’s greatest prelates by one of her finest historians.
FR. EDWARD CAHILL S.J.- Hardcover - 702 pages
The history of the modern world, since the French-Masonic Revolution, consists in the war to defend or to destroy the very ideals of Christian civilization. God's plan for men is that all of their societal structures, especially the government of their nation-states should be imbued with Catholic principles, and that Christ would be officially recognized by the state as king and ruler of the nation, that all of the laws of each state, would not only protect the freedom of His Church to operate freely among men for their salvation, but that further, each state would pattern its laws and government according the the social principles laid out by the Church for the happiness and freedom of mankind. But in the modern age, men have uncrowned Him as their King. This uncivilized age has cried out, like the Sanhedrin of old, "We will NOT have this Man rule over us." Thus, we are now quickly regressing into a new and very dark age of barbarism (with modern technology and weapons!) such as the world has never seen before.
Fr. Edward Cahill was an Irish Jesuit who founded "an Rioghacht", a group of Catholics focussed upon bringing the principles espoused in the papal encyclical Quas Primas (on the Kingship of Christ), to the modern world. This book is his masterpiece.
Gary Potter - 272 pages - Ebook
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To go after something is to inquire into it, to be in search of it, to seek the truth about it. In this book, veteran Catholic journalist Gary Potter goes after the truth concerning one of last century’s principal religious controversies, the so-called Boston Heresy Case, and its chief figure, Rev. Leonard Feeney, S.J.The most famous Jesuit of his day, Fr. Feeney broadcast on the radio, his books were best sellers, his poetry was mandatory reading in parochial schools. Suddenly, newspapers throughout the country were reporting that he was charged with heresy, expelled from the ranks of the Jesuits, and even “excommunicated.” Now his verse was removed from textbooks and Catholics were forbidden by high Church authorities to have any association with him. Scores of young men and women, students of Saint Benedict Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, defied the ban. On Sunday afternoons, they accompanied the famed cleric to Boston Common, the public park where he took to preaching when he was denied a pulpit. Leading magazines labeled him the “hate priest” on account of his preaching. Did he hate? Was he excommunicated? Was it because he preached that outside the Catholic Church there is no salvation? Gary Potter sorts the facts from the myths and the result is more than the true story of Fr. Leonard Feeney and the “Boston Heresy Case.” As Fr. Dennis P. Smith describes it in his Preface to the book: “In an era when our Catholic people and prospective converts are being force-fed on a starvation diet of watered-down doctrine and junk-food liturgy, Gary Potter has provided a banquet for the heart and soul.
Gary Potter is a native of California. After attending public schools, a professional theater academy, and college, he spent two years sailing in the Merchant Marine and another four living in France, where he discovered the Faith. Following baptism into the Church and time working in advertising in New York, he began his career in Catholic journalism in 1966 as a founding editor of the legendary Triumph magazine. Besides Triumph and two publications of which he later was editor, Truth & Justice and CCPA News & Views (the publication of Catholics for Christian Political Action), articles by him have appeared in National Review, Human Events, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The National Catholic Register, Faith & Reason, The Wanderer, The Remnant, The Angelus, From the Housetops, and numerous other publications. Mr. Potter lives with his wife, Virginia, in Washington, D.C.
Fr. Walter Farrell, O. P. - Hardcover 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.
Norbert Georges, O.P.
Preface
When this little book was composed no one dreamed that it would be an instrument of God to arouse devotion to Blessed Martin over the English speaking world and bring men to a realization of his right to be a patron of social and interracial justice. As a matter of fact, the interest it has created among English-speaking people has renewed the fervor of the Spanish-speaking people. Peru, in particular, had come to a greater realization of the treasure it possessed, and a governmental decree in November, 1939, declared Blessed Martin national patron of all works of social justice. Requests for literature in Spanish, French, Polish, Italian, German, Slovak and even Russian and Armenian, have come to the office of the Blessed Martin Guild. Everywhere, Blessed Martin is being recognized, not only as a friend in time of need, but also as a star of hope, a leader and a guide in the difficult process of spiritual growth of rehabilitation. This is undoubtedly a sign of God’s approval and a proof that Blessed Martin is a modern saint with a particular mission at this time when men are so persistently tempted to turn from God and seek their ultimate happiness and destiny in the things of earth. Blessed Martin, by his life, shows conclusively that true peace and happiness can be found only in God, that it can be found in God even by those whom the world despises and who have not the advantages of temporal prosperity and education.May this little book continue to bring joy to those in sorrow, inspiration to those in doubt, and courage to those who are depressed by suffering and the trials of this world.
The principal author of this book, Father Aladel, was a member of the Congregation of the Mission founded by Saint Vincent de Paul. More importantly, he was the spiritual director and confessor of Saint Catherine Laboure. The Miraculous Medal was designed by the Mother of God and communicated by her to Sister Catherine with the instruction that this devotion be spread throughout the Church. The inscription: O Mary conceived without sin pray for us who have recourse to thee, anticipated the definition of the Immaculate Conception by nearly a quarter of a century. This book relates not only the heavenly visitations given to this humble saint, as well as her adventures and crosses endured for Our Lady’s cause, but also it gives the ensuing history of the medal itself with many accounts of miracles which accompanied its pious reception.
Fr. Walter Farrell, O. P. - Hardcover 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.
by Dom Guy Marie Oury, O.S.B. Translated by Hope Heaney - PB 440 pages
After the devastation of the French Revolution, the first abbot of Solesmes launched the ecclesial movement which invitedall Christians to experience a spiritual participation in the liturgy, “the initial source of the true Christian spirit.” DomGuéranger worked to instill knowledge and love for the origins of Christianity and the Church of the Fathers, thus preparing afertile and fruitful “return to the sources” for the entire Church.
He defined himself as “a man of the spiritual order,” opposed in every way to the naturalism of his era. It seemed to him, andrightly so, that God’s mystery could not be treated as were the human sciences—He transcended them. Throughout his entirelife, Dom Guéranger never stopped protesting against “the diminished truths” mentioned in Psalm 11:2.
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.