History

BY JOSEPH GREGORICH - Small booklet - 74 pages

Frederic Baraga was born in Slovenia to a very pious family of the lower nobility when George Washington was president of a newly founded republic in the New World. The ‘Northwest Territories,’ where this newly born child was destined to spend thirty years of his life as a missionary to the Indian Nations of the western Great Lakes, had just been ceded to the new nation upon her independence from England and would soon be incorporated into the United States.
After being counselled by his friend and confessor in Vienna, St. Clement Mary Hofbauer, he was ordained and after a few years service in Slovenia he decided to become a missionary in the new world and was accepted by Bishop Fenwick for work in the diocese of Cincinnatti.
Bishop Baraga was well known and loved during his lifetime, and his letters about his missionary work among the Chippewa and other Indian Nations were published widely in Europe, inspiring Saint John Neumann and Father Francis Xavier Pierz, among many others, to emigrate to the United States. He spent his life working for the conversion of the native inhabitants of this new young nation, and most certainly wished that the Faith would be more widely accepted here by all men, natives and immigrants alike.
Venerable Irenaeus Frederic Baraga (June 29, 1797–January 19, 1868), Pray for us!

Hilaire Belloc - EBOOK - PDF

“As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be”…

This well known phrase could have easily been utilized in the introduction to this exceptional history of the religions of mankind that have come to birth in that portion of the world that has been the home of men since the beginning of the world and which to this day is the center of the stage where the story of our race is being played out. The epic battles among men for control of Syria and Palestine continue, and the Church still offers, as one of the primary prayer intentions of the Popes, the invitation to her faithful to Pray for the Recovery of the Holy Land.

In the 20th century as today, the land that once harbored the incarnate God and his holy family and disciples has now been criminally invaded by those men who, once upon a time, cried out on the very spot that they now have conquered, (with the connivance and invaluable and relentless assistance of the governments of the formerly Christian West), “Crucify Him!”  and “We will not have this Man to reign over us!”

This land of Syria and Palestine that had been under the power of that degenerate and infidel cult known as Mohammedanism for over 1000 years has been cruelly and brutally wrested from its inhabitants by the Mammonites of the West allied with the racist Jewish sect known as Zionism, which is considered by traditional Jews to be a heresy from Judaism. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is fast slipping into that original darkness of men known as paganism or demon worship.

Hilaire Belloc - 302 Pages - EBOOK - PDF

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc, 1870-1953, was born in France of a French Catholic father and an English protestant mother. His mother later converted under the influence of Cardinal Manning, a good friend and mentor of Hilaire.  Belloc is easily one of the most well-known Catholic writers and apologists of the 20th century.
    This book, published in 1923 after Belloc spent some time in the United States (his wife was American), is a bit reminiscent of Alexis deTocqueville’s work Democracy in America, published in 1835 after his own extensive travels in America. What is surprisingly different in their conclusions about the American political spirit is that Belloc saw more of a monarchical principle at work here than deToqueville did.
    The Contrast represents Belloc’s mature considerations of the important and critical contrast between England (and by extension, the rest of Western Europe which Belloc considers to be much closer in spirit and temper to England than to America) and that new, and to him foreign, thing that he encountered in his time here. The different topical areas that he discusses and contrasts are the physical (geographical), social, military, religious, literary, and linguistic. This is a fascinating analysis from the pen of a great Catholic man who was also a deeply provocative political thinker.

EBOOK - PDF

It was only eight years after our Sorrowful Mother appeared to the shepherd children in the south of France, that Bishop Ullathorne took up his pen to defend the authenticity of the visitation. With Rome's permission, the author writes as a contemporary chronicler of the events, conducting interviews with the seers and with ecclesiastics who were involved.

Rev. G. E. Phillips - EBOOK - PDF

This history of the Holy House of Loreto is the most decisive work in English defending the authenticity of this most hallowed shrine in all Christendom. Our Lady’s Holy House at Nazareth was taken by angels to Dalmatia (Croatia) in 1291 to prevent its desecration by the infidels. Three years later it took flight again to rest in Loreto, Italy, where it remains. Rev. Phillips provides the facts, and excitement behind the story. Many cures, apparitions, and miraculous conversions, have happened within the limestone walls of the Santa Casa.

Ebook - Dr. Paul Lavin & Robert Lavin

• Read the Book Review - The Iron Man of China

Without knowing anything about the man whose life is recounted on these pages, The Iron Man of China may seem a curious title. Except for a year furlough home in the states, Father Lavin served the Chinese people for twenty years (1932-1953), traversing thousands of miles by foot or bicycle, and exposing himself every day to life threatening dangers. In 1953 the Communists expelled him from the mainland threatening him with death if he should ever return. This well-documented book, written by the Iron Man’s nephew, illustrates one of the reasons why there are ten million Catholics, loyal to Rome, in China today.

Ebook (pdf) 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.

Ebook (pdf)The Canons and Decrees of Trent and Vatican I - In Latin and English - PB 170 pages

Here you will find all of the essential documents and infallible teachings of these two modern councils of the Catholic Church. They are beautifully laid out in a two-column format with large readable fonts  of both the original Latin and Cardinal Manning's English translation side by side.

Foreword

To say that the Catholic world is in a state of doctrinal confusion today would be an almost comical understatement, were not the issues involved—the individual salvation or damnation of every man, woman, and child on the planet—so important. Despite the wealth of defined dogmatic teaching that the Church has produced over twenty centuries, the actions of many prelates, priests, and theologians (some in the highest reaches of the hierarchy) have obscured the truths of the Faith for many, if not most, Catholics and non-Catholics.
This has happened before. In the 16th century, the successive revolts of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Henry VIII and their brethren, together with pre-existing abuses and doctrinal questions that opened the door for their defections, created an enormous amount of confusion in the Church. All areas of Catholic life—pastoral, devotional, and liturgical—suffered. As kings and princes began to create their own state churches and enforce membership in these fake churches on their hapless subjects, Pope Paul III (1534–1549) decided, in concert with Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, that the time had come to call a new Ecumenical Council. This was slated to air Protestant complaints, reform Catholic practices, define or redefine disputed dogmas, and reconcile Christian princes, with a view to uniting Christendom and reviving the Crusades. Pope and Emperor agreed that it would convene at Mantua on May 23, 1537. Renewed war broke out between the Emperor and the French, thus delaying the opening. Two years of delays led the Pope to cancel the whole process.
Emperor Charles V, however, was very keen on the idea, and on December 13, 1545, the Council at last convened at the city of Trent. The seat of a Prince-Archbishopric of the Holy Roman Empire, it was Charles’ choice for the Council’s location. During the next few years in eighteen sessions, doctrinal decrees would be issued on the Holy Scriptures, Original sin, Justification, the Sacraments in general, Baptism, and Confirmation. An outbreak of the plague and various other things, including Paul III’s death, led to the Council being prorogued indefinitely on September 17, 1549.
The new Pope, Julius III (1550–1555), agreed with Charles V that there should be no further delay. The Council Fathers gathered at Trent on May 1, 1551. The Emperor and Pope concurred that the Protestants should appear at the Council and present their case—although without being able to vote. Although some of the Reformers did set out for the Council, in the end none appeared because of their inability to vote. Nonetheless, important work was done, and decrees defining Catholic teaching on the Holy Eucharist, Penance, and Extreme Unction were passed by the delegates. Unfortunately, at this juncture, the Emperor’s war against the Protestants took a turn for the worse, and Maurice, the Elector of Saxony invaded Tyrol. The Council was broken up by the threat on April 28, 1552. As Julius III retreated ever more into his strange interests, the prospect of reconvening the Council receded, while his successor, the stern reformer Paul IV, had other fish to fry in clearing out from Rome the moral detritus left by Julius. Moreover, Charles V had abdicated in 1555; his brother and successor as Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand I, was not as interested in Council as his brother had been—at least initially.
Pius IV (1559-1565) was determined that the council should be reopened and brought to a successful conclusion. From January 18, 1562 to December 4, 1563, the Council met at Santa Maria Maggiore, and continued until its final adjournment on 4 December 1563. The final doctrinal decrees were on Matrimony; Cults of Saints, Relics, and Images; and at last the very topic that had excited Luther so much way back in 1517: Indulgences. The documents were signed at last by 255 Council Fathers, and the bull of ratification was published by the Pope on January 26, 1564.
The Council had asked the Pope to continue its work by publishing definitive versions of a catechism based upon its decrees; shepherded through by Pius IV’s nephew, St. Charles Borromeo, this appeared in 1566, and remains today as the most clear, unambiguous, and authoritative catechism in print. Having appeared under St. Pius V, the catechism was soon joined by revisions of the Breviary and Missal, the latter of which remained substantially unchanged until the mid-20th century.
Almost two centuries later in the 18th century, the Catholic world had changed considerably. On the one hand, Latin America, the Philippines, and various other new regions had been added to the Church; but on the other Protestantism had solidified into its own bloc of nations, the Enlightenment and the French and succeeding Revolutions had toppled Monarchs, and there was no more Holy Roman Emperor. Scientism and Socialism were sapping the faith even of Catholics—and the supposedly Catholic government of the new Italian Kingdom was struggling with the Papacy for control of the remainder of the Papal States. At any moment, Bl. Pope Pius IX (1846-1878) faced an imminent invasion of his own capital, Rome.
The many struggles around the world between Catholics and governments intent on usurping the rights of the Church in various ways were at once symbolized by and subsumed into the one the Pope faced. This fact, combined with the spread of the telegraph, newspapers, and steamships put the Pope very much into the forefront of the Church’s worldwide struggle. The Ultramontanist party in every Catholic land called for the closest possible unity between the national Churches and the Holy See and with each other. In the face of all of this, Bl. Pope Pius IX convoked an Ecumenical Council, Vatican I.
Although they all refused in varying tones from polite to contemptuous, all of the Eastern Orthodox Patriarchs had been invited as full participants to the Council by the Pope as an attempt to end the Eastern Schism.
Opening on December 1869 at St. Peter’s Basilica rather than the Lateran (where the prior five councils in Rome had met) and adjourned on October, 20 1870, a month after the Italians at last conducted their long-threatened seizure of Rome, Vatican I accomplished far less than Trent. Nevertheless, it did deal definitively with two important matters. The first—the pretended clash between Faith and Reason, which Liberalism had pushed to the forefront of national life in so many countries—was dealt with in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith (Dei Filius). Far more controversial and hotly debated at the time was the dogma of Papal Infallibility, at last defined in the First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ (Pastor aeternus). The Council was then prorogued. It would not be officially concluded until the eve of Vatican II.
Much of course has changed since then. But what has not changed is the essential nature of these defining documents. Regardless of changes in technology, fashion, liturgy, or anything else, these pages contain the bare minimum of what it is to be Catholic: if one can read it all and agree with it all, he is a Catholic; if not, not. In the current period of confusion, a clear guide to spiritual reality such as this is utterly essential; we all owe a debt of gratitude to Loreto Publications for making it available.

Charles A. Coulombe
Trumau, Austria
Vigil of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist - 23 June 2022

The Council of Trent
Symbol of Faith - Canonical Scriptures  - Original Sin  - Justification, Sin, & Merit  - The Sacraments in General  - Baptism  - Confirmation  - The Eucharist  - Penance  - Extreme Unction  - Communion: Under both Species & of Children  - The Mass  - Holy Orders  - Matrimony  - Purgatory  - Relics  - Indulgences  - Profession of Faith
The Council of Vatican I
Dei Filius
Dogmatic Constitution on Faith  - God the Creator  - Revelation  - Faith  - Faith & Reason  — Canons: God the Creator: Revelation: Faith: Faith & Reason

Pastor Æternus
The Church of Christ  - Papal Primacy  - Perpetual Papal Primacy  - Nature of Papal Primacy  - Papal Infallibility