Also Available in Print Format
Rosalie Marie Levy -Ebook (pdf) - 94 pages
This brief treatise was written by a woman who converted from Judaism in the early days of the 20th century and who, in her zeal to convince her fellow Jews of the wisdom of her conversion, wrote much in defense of Our Lord and his Church. One of her most famous works is Why Jews Convert—the personal story of many Jews of her day who came to the realization that Jesus was the promised Messiah and who, once having accepted that fact, followed him in the Catholic church that he founded.Given here is the barest sketch of the history of the world, followed by extensive quotes from the ancient Hebrew scriptures and a corresponding text from the New Testament proving their fulfillment. She then discusses the questions “What think you of Christ? Whose Son is He?” and gives the proper answers. Finally, she exhorts her past co-religionists to consider her arguments and then gives a list of hundreds of Jewish converts in an appendix to the work. This is a powerful little tool for both education and evangelization. Loreto’s editors think highly enough of it to have brought it back into print after an absence of over 70 years.
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.
Also Available in Print
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.
Mary Perkins - 220 pages - Ebook PDF only
This is, we believe, the first “book of etiquette for Catholics” ever published. At first glance it may seem absurd that we should need one, but have you never been puzzled by such apparently easy questions as how to address a letter to a bishop or how to end it? Or, if you are asked to be a god-parent, do you know what is expected of you, first at the church, and then afterwards throughout your own and your god-child’s life? These and a hundred other matters are clearly and amusingly explained in this book, the subjects ranging from the very simplest way to manage a Missal to what to do (and what not to do) when a Catholic doctrine or practice is attacked in your presence.This book is especially helpful for converts, but it is also extremely interesting for life-long Catholics who have little or no knowledge of the proper manners expected from a Catholic. It was first published in 1938 so the author explains much about how things were done in the Church before the second Vatican Council.
Rev. Alban Butler's ORIGINAL Lives of the Saints Vol. 2
February & March - Hardcover - Illustrated -578 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.
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 that truly 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.
Gary Potter - 272 pages - Ebook
Also Available in print edition
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. Denis Fahey, C. S. Sp. - EBOOK as PDF, EPUB, or Kindle - 72 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
Mental prayer is, in a certain sense, the most important exercise of the spiritual life. Fidelity to it (saints tell us) will ensure salvation; its complete abandonment may lead to perdition; progress therein means a corresponding progress in the interior life of union with God.Hence, the special value of books which treat of mental prayer. The excellence of the present work lies in the source from which it is drawn. St. Thomas Aquinas holds a unique place among the Doctors of the Church. He has become the official theologian of Christ’s Mystical Spouse, her Universal Doctor. She has canonized his teaching, making it her own in all its essential elements.This is the first of of Fr. Fahey’s books to be published, and it remains one of his most important for it presents the foundation of his spiritual life of prayer that was so fruitful.
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.
