Leo Stelton has put to use his years of experience teaching Latin in compiling this concise reference book. The Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin includes approximately 17,000 words with the common meaning of Latin terms found in Church writings. Entries cover Scripture, Canon Law, the Liturgy, Vatican II, the early church fathers, and theological students, as well as for those seeking to improve their knowledge of Ecclesiastical Latin. An appendix also provides descriptions of ecclesiastical structures and explains technical terms from ecclesiastical law. The Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin has already been widely praised for its serviceability and indespensability in both academic and Church settings. Leo F. Stelten is Professor of Classical Languages at Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio.
Father Leonard Feeney
Hardcover $34.95 PB $19.95
This collection of poems and other literary works of Father Feeney is not a complete collection, but a large one nonetheless. It includes almost all of four of his best books: Survival Till Seventeen, Fish on Friday, In Towns and Little Towns, and You’d Better Come Quietly, as well as some of his other works. You will rarely encounter another modern Catholic poet and writer with such depth of faith and dramatic power with words as Father Leonard Feeney. Frank Sheed, of Sheed & Ward, his original publisher and a well-known Catholic writer himself, once labeled him “America’s Chesterton”. Coming from a Catholic Englishman, that is a grand compliment indeed for an American Irishman!
This book may be ordered now for shipment the first week of January 2013.
By Professor Roberto deMattei - Softcover - 640 pages
No event of the 20th century produced a greater effect upon the Catholic Church than Vatican II, the 21st Ecumenical Council. To many it might seem to have been simply a meeting of important churchmen gathered to discuss church matters, but because the Catholic Church is the only church founded on this earth by God himself to guide men to salvation, the reality is that centuries from now historians will likely consider it, (as well as the message to the world delivered by the Mother of God during her personal visit at Fatima in 1917), as one of the two pivotal events of world history for the recently ended century.
Eighteen Enclicals of Social Reconstruction by Pope Pius XI
Edited and annotated by Fr. Joseph Husslein, S. J. - Cloth Hardcover -450 Pages
Few American Catholics truly understand t he social teachings of the Catholic Church. This may be in part due to the fact that many of he best papal teachings on this subject have either been ignored or not widely read by Americans. Father Husslein tried very hard to remedy this situation with the publication of two books in 1940 dedicated to solving this problem. He gathered together all of the encylicals by the two popes who wrote most on the topic and made certain that the english translations were well organized, accurate, and easily understandable and readable in translation. He also made many notes that are helpful to the reader. The service he performed is treausred by all students of the Church's social doctrine and these two books, so long out of print, are now available agai exactly as they were originally published.
If you have not read many of the encyclicals that were published before the modernization of encyclical writing that took place after the 2nd Vatican Council you are in for a real treat! The brevity, clarity, and chastity of the language will surprise you. Leo is no phenomenological exegete. He speaks the way one would expect the Vicar of Christ to speak, in clear, unambiguous, and manly language that is full of charity and pius unction and truth. No one who reads these most important social encylicals will come away confused. Be warned however, their brevity is deceptive. They are overflowing with profound insights and exhortations, therefore, small doses properly savored and meditated upon is the best way to imbibe the true wisdom and sound doctrine found here.
6 x 9 Hardcover 560 Pages
The late 20th and early 21st centuries have been an era of great trial for faithful Catholics. Decay, collapse, self-inflicted auto-demolition and liturgical suicide (to use the words of two 20th century popes), seeming defeat, and (dare we say it) nascent resurrection have characterised our years. This collection of articles is as good a sampling of thought from some of the best Catholic minds and warriors of this period of the Church's history, as may be found anywhere. It will stand for many years as a testament to what we have witnessed, how we have witnessed, and why we have witnessed in our days of exile.
Rt. Rev. Fernand Cabrol, O.S.B. (1855–1937) - PB -386 pages
Rev. Cabrol was the Abbot at St. Michael's in Farnborough England and the Prior of Saint Peter's ins Solesmes France. He was one of the heirs to the great Liturgical revival begun by Dom Guéranger and the monks of Solesmes in France. This is the complete Divine Office for Holy Week at the time it was published in 1926. It is useful for those who celebrate the liturgical life of the Church according to the missals of 1962 or earlier. Also available in papaerback.
Father Denis Fahey - PB - 440 pages
The principal purpose of The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World is to deal, from the theological, philosophical and historical standpoint, with the modern revolt against the divine plan for the organisation of human society. Dr. Fahey writes at length of the various errors and the nefarious forces which at present menace the divinely-constituted social order. His work is a most important one. Perhaps never before, since the establishment of Christianity, has there been such an organized effort to overthrow it, to dethrone Christ, to destroy His Church, to set aside God and the order which He has established. In some countries, notably Russia, Mexico, and Spain, the veil of secrecy has been withdrawn; in many others the same Masonic and Communistic influences are at work, but their activities are to a large extent underground. An essential prerequisite for a proper preparation (to defend the Church) is a knowledge of the nature and extent of the menace, of the organization of the forces behind it, and of the diabolical hatred of Christianity and of everything supernatural with which these forces are imbued. This knowledge is to be found in Dr. Fahey’s work; in fact nowhere else, as far as we know, is there such a logical, co-ordinated treatment of the subject.
25 Essays by Robert D. Hickson - HC - 640 pages
Archbishop Vigano's Preface
Memory is a fundamental element of a people’s identity, civilization andculture: a society without memory, whose patrimony consists solely of apresent without a past, is condemned to have no future. It is alarming thatthis loss of collective memory affects not only Christian nations, but alsoseriously afflicts the Catholic Church herself and, consequently, Catholics.This amnesia affects all social classes and is not the result of chance, but ofsystematic work on the part of those who, as enemies of the True, Goodand Beautiful, must erase any ray of these divine attributes from even themost marginal aspects of social life, from our idioms, from memories ofour childhood and from the stories of our grandparents. The Orwellianaction of artificially remodeling the past has become commonplace in thecontemporary world, to the point that a class of high school studentsare unable to recognize an altarpiece depicting a scene from the life ofChrist or a bas-relief with one of the most revered saints of the past. Dr.Robert Hickson calls this inability “deficiency of dogmatic understanding”,“Catholic illiteracy of pestilential proportions”.Tabula rasa: millions of souls who only twenty or thirty years ago wouldhave immediately identified the Baptism of the Lord in the Jordan orSaint Jerome or Saint Mary Magdalene are capable of seeing only two menalong a river, an old man with a lion and a woman with a vase. Readingthe pages of Dante, Manzoni or one of the great Christian writers of thepast, many Catholics can no longer grasp the moral and transcendentsense of a culture that is no longer their common heritage, a jealouslyguarded legacy, the deep root of a robust plant full of fruit.In its place we have a bundle of the confused rubbish of the myths of theRevolution, the dusty Masonic ideological repertoire, and the iconographyof a supposed freedom won by the guillotine, along with the persecutionof the Church, the martyrdom of Catholics in Mexico and Spain, theend of the tyranny of Kings and Popes and the triumph of bankers andviii Gratitude, Contemplation, and the Worth of Catholic Literatureusurers. A lineage of kings, saints, and heroes is ignored by its heirs, whostoop to boasting about their ancestors who were criminals, usurpers,and seditious traitors: never has falsification reached the point of suchincomprehensible perversion, and it is evident that the desire to artificiallycreate such ancestry is the necessary premise for the barbarization of theoffspring, which is now practically accomplished.We must also recognize that this removal has found significantencouragement also among those who, within the Catholic Church,have erased two thousand years of the inestimable patrimony of faith,spirituality and art, beginning with a wretched sense of inferiority instilledin the faithful even by the Hierarchy since Vatican II. The ancient apostolicliturgy, on which centuries of poetic compositions, mosaics, frescoes,paintings, sculptures, chiseled vases, illuminated chorales, embroideredvestments, plainchants and polyphony have been shaped, has beenproscribed. In its place we now have a squalid rite without roots, bornfrom the pen of conspirators dipped in the inkwell of Protestantism; musicthat is no longer sacred but profane; tasteless liturgical vestments andsacred vessels made of common material. And as a grey counterpoint tothe hymns of St. Ambrose and St. Thomas, we now have poor paraphraseswithout metrics and without soul, grotesque paintings and disturbingsculptures. The removal of the admirable writings of the Fathers of theChurch, the works of the mystics, the erudite dissertations of theologiansand philosophers and, in the final analysis, of Sacred Scripture itself –whose divine inspiration is sometimes denied, sacrilegiously affirmingthat it is merely of human origin – have all constituted necessary stepsof being able to boast of the credit of worldly novelties, which beforethose monuments of human ingenuity enlightened by Grace appear asmiserable forgeries.This absence of beauty is the necessary counterpart to an absence ofholiness, for where the Lord of all things is forgotten and banished, noteven the appearance of Beauty survives. It is not only Beauty that hasbeen banished: Catholic Truth has been banished along with it, in all itscrystalline splendor, in all its dazzling consistency, in all its irrepressiblecapacity to permeate every sphere of civilized living. Because the Truthis eternal, immutable and divisive: it existed yesterday, it exists todayand it will exist tomorrow, as eternal and immutable and divisive as theWord of God.Certainly, behind this induced amnesia, there is a Trinitarian heresy. Andwhere the Deceiver lurks, the eternal Truth of God must be obscured inorder to make room for the lie, the betrayal of reality, the denial of the past.In a forgery that is truly criminal forgery, even the very custodians of thedepositum fidei ask forgiveness from the world for sins never committed byour fathers – in the name of God, Religion or the Fatherland – supportingthe widest and most articulated historical forgery carried out by theenemies of God. And this betrays not only the ignorance of History whichis already culpable, but also culpable bad faith and the malicious will todeceive the simple ones.Rediscovering memory, even in literature, is a meritorious and necessarywork for the restoration of Christianity, a restoration that is neededtoday more than ever if we want to entrust to our children a legacy to bepreserved and handed down as a tangible sign of God’s intervention inthe history of the human race: how much Providence has accomplishedover the centuries – and that art has immortalized by depicting miracles,the victories of the Christians over the Turk, sovereigns kneeling at thefeet of the Virgin, patron saints of famous universities and prosperouscorporations – can be renewed today and especially tomorrow, only if wecan rediscover our past and understand it in the light of the mystery ofthe Redemption.This book proposes the noble purpose of restoring Catholic memory,bringing it back to its ancient splendor, that is, the substance of aharmonious and organic past that has grown and still lives today, just asthe hereditary traits of a child are found developed in the adult man, oras the vital principle of the seed is found in the sap of the tree and in thepulp of the fruit. Robert Hickson rightly shows us, in the restoration ofmemory, the way to rediscover the shared faith that shapes the traits of ashared Catholic culture.In this sense it is significant – I would say extremely appropriate, even ifonly by analogy – to have also included Christian literature among theSacramentals, applying to it the same action as that of blessed water, theglow of the candles, the ringing of bells, the liturgical chant: the invocationof the Virgin in the thirty-third canto of Dante’s Paradiso, the dialogueof Cardinal Borromeo with the Innominato, and a passage by Chestertonall make Catholic truths present in our minds and, in some way, theyrealize what they mean and can influence the spiritual life, expandingand completing it. Because of this mystery of God’s unfathomable mercywe are touched in our souls, moved to tears, inspired by Good, spurredto conversion. But this is also what happens when we contemplate analtarpiece or listen to a composition of sacred music, in which a ray ofdivine perfection bursts into the greyness of everyday life and shows us thesplendor of the Kingdom that awaits us.The author writes: “We are called to the commitment to recover the life andfull memory of the Body of Christ, even if in our eyes we cannot do much torebuild that Body”. But the Lord does not ask us to perform miracles: Heinvites us to make them possible, to create the conditions in our souls andin our social bodies so that the wonders of divine omnipotence may bemanifested. To open ourselves to the past, to the memory of God’s greatactions in history, is an essential condition for making it possible for us tobecome aware of our identity and our destiny today so that we may restorethe Kingdom of Christ tomorrow.+ Carlo Maria ViganòTitular Archbishop of UlpianaApostolic Nuncio28 August 2020Saint AugustineBishop, Confessor, and Doctor of the Church