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History

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Thomas B. Costain, 508, Paperback

Thomas B. Costain - 508 pages Paperback

Thomas B. Costain was a Canadian journalist and author who became a US citizen in 1920 and rose to international fame in the 1940s as a historical novelist and author of such works as The Silver Chalice and The Black Rose. The White and the Gold was one of his best works and is not a novel, but rather a history of the founding of New France from its discovery in 1497 until the early 1700s when the war with England for the domination of New France began in earnest.
Although this is a factual history and not fiction, the writer has applied the arts of stylistic narrative that he practiced so well as a novelist and the result is a book that will capture the attention of the reader from the first pages and hold it until the end. Indeed, the characters who founded and built a Catholic civilization in the wilderness of North America, both saints and sinners, who are the real subject of this work are so colorful and majestic in their lives and exploits as to be anything but the object of intense interest and sympathy on the part of the reader.
This is one of the finest works of historical scholarship that we have ever read, and Loreto is pleased to make this great work available once again sixty years after its original publication and almost 500 years after the first serious explorations of New France began.

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Robert Wolfe, 200, Paperback

The Papal Plan for Restoration: Restoring the Catholic Priesthood

A Study Guide for Catholic Laity, Seminarans, and Clergy - By Robert Wolfe

Large 8.5" by 11" format 200 pages - paperback

As the title suggests, this book describes a plan taken from key papal encyclicals that engendered and safeguarded the vitality of the Catholic Faith in the prospering pre-Conciliar Church. That plan is still being followed by small traditional Catholic communities around the world today, producing that same vitality in their members. The families in these communities, particularly the heroic mothers in these large families, produce many priestly vocations. Shepherded by the traditional orders that serve them, these families seed the restoration of the Catholic priesthood.
In the Book:

• A wake-up call for Catholics.
• Modern popes quoted acknowledging the crisis in the Church.
• Extensive statistics on problems currently facing the Church.
• A thorough study guide on the problems and their proposed solutions.
• More than twenty papal encyclicals quoted.
• Six key encyclicals studied in detail.
• Six elements of the Plan developed from the encyclicals.
• Ten cause-and-effect relationships developed, statistically linking the crisis with the 
implementation of changes subsequent to Vatican II.
• Statistical evidence that the current crisis could have been prevented had the bishops at Vatican II not ignored the quoted warnings of pre-Conciliar popes.
• A logical, defendable, statistical estimate of the abundance of Catholic priests the Church would have today if pre-Conciliar Church growth had continued.
• Statistical evidence that the current shortage of priests has a proven remedy not being seriously 
considered by our bishops.
• Statistics on vital Catholic communities successfully implementing the Plan.
• New seminaries ordaining many traditional priests for the Extraordinary Form Mass.
• Integral to the study guide is an extensive survey questionnaire on the Faith, the Mass and The Plan.

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1622920732, Msgr. Philip Hughes, 344, Paperback, 1 of 3

Volume One: The Church and the World in which the Church was Founded

Msgr. Philip Hughes - PB - 344 pages

The first volume, then treats of the Church in the West up to the conversion of Constantine (312) but in the East up to Justinian I—or rather a century and a half beyond to allow for the consummation of the disunion that followed Chalcedon.


Volume One: The Church and the World in which the Church was Founded
Volume Two: The Church and the World the Church Created
Volume Three: The Church and the Revolt against it of the Church-created World

 

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Hilaire Belloc, 362, Paperback

Hilaire Belloc - PB - 362 Pages

“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.

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1622920740, Msgr. Philip Hughes, 500, Paperback, 2 of 3

Volume Two: The Church and the World the Church Created

Msgr. Philip Hughes - PB - 500 pages

 The first volume, then treats of the Church in the West up to the conversion of Constantine (312) but in the East up to Justinian I—or rather a century and a half beyond to allow for the consummation of the disunion that followed Chalcedon. This second volume carries the history through to the time of St. Thomas Aquinas, while the third volume takes the story from Aquinas to Martin Luther.


Volume One: The Church and the World in which the Church was Founded
Volume Two: The Church and the World the Church Created
Volume Three: The Church and the Revolt against it of the Church-created World

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Msgr. Philip Hughes , Paperback

Volume Three: The Church and the Revolt against it of the Church-created World

Msgr. Philip Hughes - PB

The first volume, then treats of the Church in the West up to the conversion of Constantine (312) but in the East up to Justinian I—or rather a century and a half beyond to allow for the consummation of the disunion that followed Chalcedon. This second volume carries the history through to the time of St. Thomas Aquinas, while the third volume takes the story from Aquinas to Martin Luther.


Volume One: The Church and the World in which the Church was Founded
Volume Two: The Church and the World the Church Created
Volume Three: The Church and the Revolt against it of the Church-created World

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E. E. Y. Hale, 378 pages, Paperback

Pio Nono:A Study in European Politics and Religion in the Nineteenth Century

by E. E. Y. Hales  - PB - 378 pages


At the time of his death in 1878 Pope Pius IX had served as pope longer than any pope besides Saint Peter. His papacy, from 1846 until 1878, was the political and religious pivot-point of the nineteenth century.
He was elected pope as the candidate of the politically “liberal” party in the College of Cardinals. By liberal here we mean those who were sympathetic generally towards the new republican and anti-monarchical leanings of so many leaders and thinkers in those post-enlightenment years; but the violent revolutions of 1848 convinced him that the liberals had far more than merely political ends in mind. In fact, he now believed that the destruction of the Church was their ultimate goal, and for many of the leaders, it was. Because of that, he became, although not by his choice, a political as well as a religious warrior.
Because the position that Pio Nono inherited as Pope was that not only of the universal shepherd of the faithful and vicar of Christ, but also that of a temporal Prince and sovereign, the task of leadership before him was inextricably intertwined with political and revolutionary affairs. The great battles of church and state that dominated that century were, by the grace of God, his to fight. Mr. Hales beautifully and faithfully tells us the story of that battle and Blessed Pio Nono’s part in it.

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Paperpack -380 pages

Matthew Abraham Ryan (he changed his name to Abram because the name Abraham became distasteful to him when Lincoln declared war on his nation, the CSA), was born in Norfolk Virginia of an Irish Catholic family from County Limerick and is known not only as a mystic poet of the Catholic religion but also as the Poet Laureate of the Confederacy. He was the most popular and most quoted and recited poet of his generation in the South and in the North. This is an exact reprinting of the 12th edition of his complete collected works that was issued at Baltimore in 1888.

Father Ryan worked as a chaplain to the troops of his nation during the long and brutal war that killed all of the hopes for freedom and nationhood among his people who rose so manfully to battle to defend their homeland in 1861. In the hour of defeat Fr. Ryan won the heart of the entire South by his poem Conquered Banner, whose exquisite measure was taken, as he told a friend, from one of the Gregorian hymns.

Beyond and above and permeating his deep and abiding love for the South was his love for our Lord and our Blessed Lady that is so powerfully expressed in his poetry and verse. His was the heart of a lover and a mystic, one who knows life and reality so well that anyone could say that he truly understood what Saint Augustine meant when he said that our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee O Lord! Take up this precious work of his and prepare to be truly moved in your heart and soul with the beauty and depth of these emanations of his beautiful Catholic soul.

 

From Fr. Ryan’s Sursum Corda:

Lonely hearts! lonely hearts! this is but a land of grief;

Ye are pining for repose—ye are longing for relief:

What the world hath never given, kneel and ask of God above,

And your grief shall turn to gladness, if you lean upon His love.

Lonely hearts! God is Love.

 Publishers’ Preface to the Second Edition.

For years the name of Father Ryan has been a household word. It is known wherever the English language is spoken, and everywhere it is reverenced as the appellation of a true child of song. It is especially dear to the people of the South, among whom he who bears it has lived and worked and touched his tuneful harp. These, his poems, have moved multitudes. They have thrilled the soldier on the eve of battle, and quickened the martial impulses of a chivalric race; they have soothed the soul-wounds of the suffering; and they have raised the hearts of men in adoration and benediction to the great Father of all.

When the announcement was first made that they were to be gathered together into a volume, the news was heard as glad tidings by the friends of the poet-priest, and the book had hardly appeared when the edition was exhausted. The ablest critics were generous in their praise of it, and predicted that it would be for its author a monument more enduring than brass.

Publishers’ Preface to the Twelfth Edition.

The publication of the poems of Father Ryan has reached the twelfth edition. To the Memoir, which found place in the eleventh edition, are now added many beautiful songs, some of which have not heretofore been published; and also many new illustrations.So popular have the writings of the poet-priest become, that many songs and ballads have been printed as emanations of his pen for which he was not responsible.

This edition is printed from new electrotype plates, and is greatly improved in style over all former editions. It includes all the poems written by Father Ryan which, if living, he would offer to the public. His death in 1880 stilled the sweetest voice that ever was raised in behalf of the faith and clime he loved so well.

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Fr. John Hugo , 422 Pages - PB

Fr. John Hugo - 422 Pages - PB

Fr. Onesimus Lacouture was a Jesuit who had the great gift of being a masterful director of souls. Being a Jesuit formed in the old mold of true Ignatian spirituality and deeply affected by the so-called “French School” of Cardinal Berulle, St. John Eudes, and St. Louis Marie de Montfort, his retreats, given to over 6000 American and Canadian priests, produced extraordinary results. His most well known disciple and good friend, Fr. Hugo, has produced for posterity, the Notes from those Ignatian retreats as given by Fr. Lacouture and subsequently by himself and many other priests.
A Sign of Contradiction is Fr. Hugo’s apologia for the work of Fr. Lacouture and the “spiritual movement” that grew spontaneously from the ardent, enlightened, and effective preaching of the retreats. He describes the movement, its opponents and its supporters as well as the revelatory doctrines so convincingly presented by Fr. Lacouture.
This book is spiritually motivating, historically informative, and powerfully illuminating in regard to the condition of the Church and the faithful in North America during the mid-twentieth century. The Gospel of Peace, and Applied Christianity (the retreat notes of Fr. Lacouture) by Fr. Hugo are also available from Loreto Publications.

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Timothy O' Donnell, 292, Softcover

Ireland, in its halcyon years, was commonly called the land of saints and scholars by a grateful Christendom. And, although the emerald isle, like other Catholic nations, had not only its peaks of sanctity but its lows of spiritual tepidity (as we see manifest everywhere today), the land of the Gaels has rarely, if ever, been without her martyrs. Be it at the hands of pagan Viking marauders, Puritan savages or the rapacious imperialists of perfidious Albion, Ireland has drunk from the Lord’s chalice deeply and often. This stirring account of a very crucial period in Irish history was written by historian Timothy T. O’Donnell, a worthy son of the illustrious O’Donnell clan, who now serves as president of Christendom College. With that Catholic reverence that only a filial piety nurtured in the holy Faith can generate, the author brings to life a somewhat obscure slice of Irish history that ought to stand out prominently in the annals of heroic struggles against draconian injustice. This is the story of the Catholic uprising of the three Hughs: Hugh O’Donnell, Red Hugh, his valiant son, and Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, master dissembler and cunning diplomat, whom Queen Elizabeth preferred to call "Beelzebub." Beginning in 1595, the war for liberty and the reign of Christ the King grew in strength victory by victory, such wise that by 1599 all of Ireland was ruled by native Irishmen as an independent Catholic Kingdom. It was to be a short-lived independence ending with the pathos of the "Flight of the Earls" in 1603 and the toxic murder in Spain of Red Hugh, "the son of prophecy," by an English spy. The battle cry of the mighty warriors of "The O’Donnell," Red Hugh, may now be silent, though not ever silenced: "Papa Aboo!" (The Pope to victory!) For in Gaelic hearts "the visible King" of the isle will forever be the Vicar of Christ.

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Warren H. Carroll, 385

Isabel of Spain has always captivated historians, pro and con. According to historian Warren Carroll, she was not only the greatest woman monarch to rule in Christendom, but she is also eminently canonizable. A woman of prayer and courageous action, she was also a devoted wife and mother. Spain was far from a great Catholic country when Isabel came to full power in 1474. After eight hundred years of Moslem occupancy, much of the country was still under the enemy’s yoke. Even before she had married Prince Ferdinand of Aragon and united the country, the Princess of Castile had managed to restore order and discipline to her own morally dissipated province. After the reconquest of Granada, the Moslem’s last stronghold, she had the liberty to finance the expedition of Columbus. Many of her other virtues are chronicled by Doctor Carroll: her patience in suffering, her endurance of betrayals, and, most importantly, her unmitigating support for, and oftentimes her personal initiation of, ecclesiastical reform.

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093188845X, Warren H. Carroll, 203, Paperback

Never have you seen in print a book in the English language which captures so gloriously the triumphs of a chastised Church during the height of the French revolution’s three year Reign of Terror. A nation which prided itself on being the Church’s “Eldest Daughter” had nearly lost the Faith in the wake of the “Enlightenment” of the eighteenth century. A just king, Louis XVI, and his pious queen, Marie Antoinette, went bravely and separately to the scaffold with a prayer for their enemies on their lips, while a howling mob of twenty-thousand deranged libertarians cheered on the regicide. Among the forty-thousand Catholic victims of the revolution were sixteen Carmelite nuns, who sang the Veni Creator Spiritus as they consummated the final stage of a heavy blade’s ravenous conflict with the Cross. In The Guillotine and the Cross, Doctor Carroll not only presents the dark side of the bloodbath, but the inspirational as well.

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Warren H. Carroll, 123, Softcover

In the late fifteenth century, Satan reigned in all his unmitigated cruelty in the very heart of what was to be the Americas. Only thirty some years later, the Queen of Heaven crushed his head, taking away his bloody government, and establishing in perpetuity the merciful reign of her very maternal and Immaculate Heart. Garnering his information from the best authentic sources, contemporary as well as modern, Warren H. Carroll weaves his tapestry of the true birth of Mexico in dramatic style.

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Hilaire Belloc, 272, Softcover
Originally subtitled “A Study,” Belloc’s Richelieu is a compelling sketch of the Cardinal’s character — specifically of his Will — seen through his background, the figures surrounding him, and his line of action. It is also, above all, a compact chronicle of the making of modern Europe, and the tragedy of its rupture into Catholic and Protestant camps. In attempting to achieve for France the leadership of Europe, Richelieu, Belloc says, “loosed forces stronger than he could deal with,” with the consequent weakening, if not destruction, of Catholicism: “. . . he had almost ruined it in the Empire, and had in any case left it permanently unable to recover its old supremacy there.” This gripping permanently unable to recover its ld supremacy there.” This gripping tale, unfolding at the heart of the European story, is a candid look at Richeliu’s uncanny statesmanship and undoubted sincerity, and the unintended but disastrous effect of these upon the soul of Western civilization.

“. . . Once [Gustavus Adolphus] took the field, Richelieu found that he had called up the devil, and that the devil was too much for him.” Hilaire Belloc, 1930

by Hilaire Belloc
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0971828636, Hilaire Belloc, 288, Softcover

Hilaire Belloc

Belloc has written elsewhere that the victory of the Reformation in England led to its victory in much of the rest of Europe. That victory unleashed the forces of social disintegration, Protestantism, Capitalism, and anti-Catholicism and let them to challenge the tradition of Monarchy on the field of battle. This book tells the story of how Charles I came to face those forces, manipulated by the Money Power, and how and why he failed. Charles I reads like "a ripping yarn", but it explores the personalities, the issues, the clashes, and the circumstances as they were. Thus it is not "acceptable orthodoxy." But it is real history.

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Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò on the Church, America, and the World

Edited by Brian McCall

About the Book

“To restore the beauty of holiness to the face of the Bride of Christ, which is terribly disfigured by so many abominable crimes, and if we truly want to free the Church from the fetid swamp into which she has fallen, we must have the courage to tear down the culture of secrecy and publicly confess the truths we have kept hidden.” These bold words from the pen of an archbishop in exile—part of a bombshell exposé published in August 2018 concerning Theodore McCarrick and his circle—catapulted the ecclesiastical diplomat Carlo Maria Viganò to international prominence. In a steady stream of interventions from that time onward, Archbishop Viganò has not only supplied further incriminating details on the current Vatican regime but has extended his critique to the neo-modernism and worldly accommodation that officially entered the Church through the Second Vatican Council. He argues, moreover, that just as there is a “deep state” of wealthy and powerful international elites who exercise enormous sway over political affairs and cultural vectors, so too there is a “deep church” that retains for its advantage the external trappings of religion while pursuing an agenda of error and moral corruption. These pseudo-sovereignties closely collaborate as they work for the same goals, which are, at this point, an open secret.

A Voice in the Wilderness collects for the first time all the major writings of Archbishop Viganò from August 2018 to January 2021, with explanatory introductions and notes by Brian M. McCall. Finally available in one place to allow for easy access, assimilation, and debate, it is the definitive edition of an extraordinary body of pronouncements that have stirred up vehement controversy on all sides. Regardless where one stands in its regard, Viganò’s arresting message cannot be ignored. Ultimately, it is one of conversion to Christ the King, the Truth in person, who sets us free from the accumulating slaveries of our time.

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George J. Hill, M.A., 360, Softcover

George J. Hill, M.A. - 360 pages softcover

Few stories grip the heart and stir the soul like those tales of faithful Catholics who have risen up in arms to throw off the tyrrany of anti-Catholic oppressors. The great stories from the bible such as that of young David or Judas Macchabeus and his sons have their numerous counterparts in the history of the Church as well. What Catholic has not thrilled to such stories as that of the First Crusade, or the defense of Malta or the Battle of Lepanto—all victories for the Catholics. But even when the Catholic cause is not immediately sucessful as in such epic wars as the Jacobite rebellions, the nine-years war of Red Hugh O’Donnell and The O’Neill against Queen Elizabeth, or the fight of the Cristeros for a Catholic Mexico, the stark reality of such glorious sacrifices for the Faith inspires us down through the ages.

Such is the story of the War in LaVendée and the courage of youth displayed in the story of the Little Chouannerie by the teenage scholars of Vannes. The satanic explosion of hatred of Christ, of his Church, and of all that was decent in Catholic France that is known to history as the French Revolution was valiantly opposed in the west of France by a peasant army in both Brittany and in LaVendée. This is their story.

The names of Charette, LaRochejaquelein, Abbé Bernier, Cathelineau, Le Tiec, and Jean Chouan should be as well known to Catholics as those of Red Hugh O'Donnell, Bonnie Prince Charlie, Padre Pro, Godfrey deBouillion, Don Juan of Austria and others.

This story will break your heart…and will mend it as well.

Vive la Nation! Vive le Roi! Vive la réligion Catholique! 

Preface
It is commonly argued by writers on the French Revolution that the state of the Church, as well as of the nation in general, must have been exceedingly corrupt, and that both clergy and people were equally destitute of religious belief and of moral principle, or so total a disruption of all the bonds of society could never have taken place, attended as it was with circumstances of unprecedented confusion and horror; and they point to the fact of priests and religious, and even bishops, openly apostatizing from Christianity, and abandoning themselves to all the infamous license of the times, and the atrocious crimes perpetrated by a people so lately, in profession at least, Catholic.


That society was radically and irretrievably corrupt especially in high places, and that many of the clergy, and in particular those about the court, were deeply infected with the taint of infidelity, is unhappily too true. But such writers seem utterly to overlook a fact equally patent and remarkable, that hundreds of ecclesiastics not merely retained and avowed their religious belief, in spite of persecution and contempt, but shed their blood for the faith; enduring the grossest insults and the most agonizing torments, not only with meekness and resignation, but with a touching piety, and a sweet and tender charity towards their murderers, such as make their constancy and fortitude differ in kind from any thing which mere natural heroism, however exalted, has at any time exhibited; while thousands risked their lives and abandoned all things for conscience sake. If a few traitors and apostates—for few they were in comparison with those who stood firm in the hour of trial, and nobly suffered all that a diabolical malice could inflict, rather than abate one tittle of their obedience to the divine law; if this wretched minority are to be taken as a proof of the inroads that vice and infidelity had made upon the Church of France, how triumphant is the demonstration afforded by her numerous martyrs and confessors that she was yet sound and pure at heart!


And as respects the people at large “To judge of a whole nation,” says Mr. Belaney in his Massacre at the Carmes, “by the conduct or manners of its populace in its capital and larger cities in times of great excitement, would lead to as false and unjust, as well as ungenerous conclusions, in respect to that nation, as it would to judge of an individual only by what he did when under the effects of delirium tremens or intoxication.” “The populace,” as he elsewhere observes, “required to be deceived, as well as bribed into the commission of acts which cause us to shudder when we look back on them, even at a distance of sixty years.” An execrable faction, devoid of every principle of morality and every feeling of humanity, had usurped the power of the state; and while over-awing the better portion of the nation by wholesale proscription and slaughter, drove the masses of the people to enact, in a frenzy of terror and fury, excesses which, left to themselves and in their sober senses, they would never have had the heart to perpetrate. That under the seething surface of vice and impiety which covered the land, there lay hid all the while, even in the worst days of the Revolution, fathomless depths of sanctity and devotion beyond the ken of the godless world, the annals of the times sufficiently testify; and that, even when the nation had passed through its fiery conflict, and a generation to whom religion was an effête superstition, and priests but tyrants and impostors, appeared upon the scene, there still remained, not only among the country populations, but among the inhabitants of the towns, a vast amount of supernatural belief, which waited only for an occasion to manifest itself, one circumstance alone would prove:—the demonstrations, not of sympathy and affection merely, but of religious veneration, with which Pius VII was everywhere received on his entrance into France, a prisoner, in the year 1809; multitudes crowding round the carriage in which he was seated, and begging his benediction on their knees as he passed along.

But if the clergy of France contributed its noble army of martyrs at Paris, Lyons, Nantes, her peasantry of Brittany and La Vendée sent forth an heroic band of veritable soldiers of the cross, as admirable and as worthy of being held in everlasting honor as their enemies are deserving of the universal reprobation of mankind. Brave, generous, honorable, merciful, and pure, in the heat of the fight resolute and undaunted as veteran soldiers, and in the hour of victory as tender-hearted as children—what a contrast do these “brigands,” as their opponents called them, present to the self-styled “patriots” of the Republican forces! Sensual, treacherous, bloodthirsty, breathing only hatred and revenge, exhibiting a cruelty and a ferocity truly satanic, their delight seemed to be only in massacre and rapine, and in the commission of the most hideous crimes. Catholic France may well be proud of her heroes of La Vendée. What but simple, supernatural faith could have produced such an army of patriot crusaders, and inspired a system of warfare so truly Christian?


For it is not possible to separate the religion and devotion of the Vendean peasants from their natural virtues and martial qualities. As they fought primarily for their Church, and only secondarily and, as it may be said, accidentally, for their king, so first and before all things they were Catholics: —to their heart’s core they were what the pseudo-philosophers of the day would call “superstitious and bigoted;” as much so as the priests who walked calmly forward to meet their assassins with their breviaries in their hands, and the names of Jesus and Mary on their lips. These men, so intrepid, so cool and yet so daring, so generous and so noble-minded, recited their rosaries on their way to the battlefield, and threw themselves on their knees before the image of the Crucified as they charged down upon the bayonets of the foe. Abstract from the Vendean his faith, and he is no longer the same man: that faith not only inspired his actions, it made him what he was.


As to the conduct and results of the war, it is unnecessary to anticipate here remarks that are made in the course of the narrative. In spite of some signal and palpable blunders, no candid mind, which considers the disadvantages under which they labored, will withhold from both generals and subordinates a very high need of praise, not only for their courage, which was undoubted, but for their strategic skill and address. Unhappily, as the contest proceeded, and their first chosen leaders perished in battle, serious evils began to show themselves; fatal jealousies were engendered, dissensions broke out amongst the new commanders, cruelties were perpetrated which rivaled in barbarity the enormities by which they were provoked, unjustifiable severities were adopted even against members of their own body, and the whole morale of the army notably degenerated. Such were but the inevitable consequences of long-continued warfare, and that of so embittered a character, the subversion of all established order, and the absence of any legitimate head. And yet to the end sufficient of the old spirit remained to excite the fears and even to elicit the admiration of their foes. Despite the terrible reverses encountered in the field, and the general disorganization that ensued, their bravery and tenacity had made themselves so effectually felt, that the Vendean insurgents succeeded finally in obtaining an honorable peace. But their greatest glory consisted in the fact, that the Catholic religion never ceased to be openly professed in La Vendée; nor did they consent to lay down their arms until liberty of worship was guaranteed to them, and their priests were recognized and protected by the laws.

Hence the moral effects of this war it is hardly possible to overrate. Not only did it prove that France never could be one and indivisible, never could be at peace with herself until religion was re-established; not only did the valor and enthusiasm which were evoked insure respect to the religion which was able to produce such sensible effects—but the multitudes whom terror had silenced and isolated, the weak, the timid, the despondent, and even they in whom the light of faith was well-nigh quenched, felt the influence of a struggle in which they took no part; it awoke and sustained a secret sympathy in their breasts, and kept them in a state of continual readiness to welcome back, even with acclamations, the religion for which they had neither the courage nor the will to suffer or to contend.
What, therefore, may not the France of this day owe to La Vendée! How much of the religious revival which now fills Catholic Christendom with admiration and joy may be due to that contest, so obstinately and so fruitlessly maintained, as some may think, in that little corner of the west? And this in two ways; first, as has been intimated, by keeping the lamps burning in her sanctuaries when elsewhere they had been extinguished and the very altars themselves overthrown, and leaving them as beacons to announce to all failing and faltering hearts that an incarnate God still had worshippers, and Peter loyal subjects, among a rebellious and apostate people; and secondly, and principally, by willingly offering that sacrifice which God never fails to accept and to requite—the sacrifice of the heart’s-blood of the best and purest of her children. That blood, like the blood of the martyr-priests, has never ceased to cry out, not for vengeance, but for mercy and for blessings—the richest and the choicest, because spiritual and heavenly—on the land that poured it out as though it had been the blood of brute cattle that die unpitied in the shambles, or rather of the wild beasts of the forest whom it was a necessity to exterminate. Certain it is that nowhere has religion, so trodden down and all but exterminated as it was, had so speedy and so astonishing a resurrection as in once infidel France, and to what can this be more probably attributed, than to that spirit of immolation which animated alike the priests of the Carmes and the peasants of La Vendée? If the butcheries of Tyburn are one day to yield, as we may piously hope, a fruitful harvest of souls to the Church in our land, what might England long ere this have become, had more of her sons bled and died with the gallant Nortons around the banner of the Five Precious Wounds, and the gibbets stood tenfold thicker between Newcastle and Wetherby?


The strength and reality of the principles for which La Vendée contended, and the ardor with which the flame there enkindled burned on, despite the indifference and secularity which weighed upon the land, may be estimated by the enthusiasm excited in the breasts of the young students of Vannes, and the bravery and fortitude displayed in their defense. Singular phenomenon that some hundreds of boys should turn soldiers in sober earnest, all because the great emperor bullied the Pope, changed their catechism, and gave them Charlemagne for their patron instead of St. Catharine and St. Nicholas; but no ambiguous omen of bright and glorious days to France, that, in what with many would have passed for a mere piece of state-policy, with which they had no concern, these schoolboys and seminarians should feel to the quick that a great principle was at stake, for which they were bound, as with all their hearts they were willing, to fight and to die.


The scholars of Vannes—as many as survive—have now passed the prime of their life; but during the forty years that have gone by, what services have they not rendered, by their labors, their writings, their courageous examples, to the Church, to literature, to society! And whence had they derived their first inspirations, but from those annals of the old Chouannerie which as boys it was their delight to collect, and from those bearded men, with their bronzed countenances and thoughtful brows, who had returned to renew the studies of their youth, only that they might complete, as ministers of peace at the altar, the warfare they had begun on the battlefield? True patriots, whose patria is not of this world; though accidentally and from circumstances associated with monarchy, their Catholicism was subservient to no form of government, albeit respectful and friendly to all; upholding obedience to constituted authority as the ordinance of God, it looked, above all things, to maintaining intact the liberties of the Church and the independence of the spiritual power. To such men and such principles France owes everything; and on France at this moment hang the destinies of the world.

 

The story of La Vendée and of the Little Chouannerie is gathered from the various extant sources; but in the case of the latter, which is drawn principally from M. Rio’s own narrative, an endeavor has been made to assign to that gentleman the position which rightfully belonged to him, but which his modesty and humility prevented him from assuming.


The reader will find a most striking description of the old “Chouans” and the “Little Vendée” among M. Sonvestre’s Tales and Sketches of Brittany and La Vendée, published in Constable’s Miscellany of Foreign Literature. The incidents, which were taken by the author from the mouth of one of Jean’s brothers-in-arms, are related in a style as graphic and touching, as it is simple and unadorned.


The conflict in La Vendée had its counterpart in Flanders. M. Hendrik Conscience, in his spirited historical tale of the era, has described with much dramatic power the sufferings of the people, and their determined, but disastrous, and, as it turned out, fatally ineffectual resistance to the revolutionary forces, and (in the worst sense) revolutionary principles of France. The work in question has just been translated into English. Although fictitious in form, it adheres faithfully to the facts of history: the notes to the original Flemish show, by extracts from the accounts, proclamations, etc., which appeared in the Antwerp newspapers of the time, that the gatherings, skirmishes, and principal events therein depicted, down to the great battle with which the story closes, actually occurred as represented. A few resolute and courageous men, while the masses of their countrymen “looked on in dumb terror” at the destruction of all they held dear and venerable, kept up a continual harassing warfare against the invader, until they were either individually taken and shot, or mowed down in hundreds by the musketry, or hewed and hacked to pieces by the merciless sabers of the French soldiery. But though crushed, and to all outward seeming annihilated, that insurrection against the most intolerable of all despotisms, the tyranny of an impious liberalism, and in defense of altar and hearth, faith and liberty, had as in La Vendée, a most powerful moral effect at the time, and exerted doubtless, both in the natural and in the supernatural order, influences the operation of which we have still before our eyes. For we may well consider the present prosperous condition of Belgium, the freedom, both political and religious, which she enjoys, and the simple piety of her people, to be at once the result and the reward of the spirit displayed, and the sufferings endured, in that truly patriotic struggle.


  1. H. T.
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Dom Louis Soltner, 240, Paperback

Dom Louis Soltner - PB 240 pages

This history of Solesmes and its founder Dom Guéranger is an excellent work published by the Monks of Solesmes. It tells the story of one of the greatest scholars and saintly men of the 19th century, and chronicles the enduring work that he founded and promoted during his lifetime. In our estimation, it is slightly marred by some comments regarding the movement toward a restoration of the Roman Liturgy that was largely inspired by Dom Guéranger and how that movement has culminated in the novus ordo liturgy of the 20th century. However, that issue aside, it is an excellent historical resumé, and it is well worth your time to read.

For more in-depth commentary on the modern liturgical movement, we refer our readers to the book by Fr. Bonneterre found on our website here.

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J. J. Barry, 516, Paperback

J. J. Barry - PB - 516 pages

Christopher Columbus is one of the most saintly and heroic Catholic laymen in the annals of our glorious history, whose true life-story should be known by all Catholics, but especially by Catholic Americans who owe so much to him.
It is very important for Catholics to have a sense of gratitude, and to express it. Columbus Day is still, in this age of secularism and hatred of the Faith, a civil holiday; one that should be celebrated with great reverence, especially by Catholic Americans.
The true story of his life and the glories of his achievement (indeed all of the achievements of that great Catholic nation called Spain), have been under attack for a long time now by the Christ-haters, some of whom even pretend that it might be true that the people of the Americas would have been better off without Columbus’ discoveries and the subsequent events of conquest and evangelization due to his efforts. This book refutes those calumnies.
To recognize and admit that the success of the great voyages of discovery was truly due to the special designs of the providence of God and under His direct protection, was the first impulse of the heart of Columbus. His life of faith and devotion is truly inspirational.
The miraculous nature of Columbus’ life and work is the subject of this extensive biography. Here you will discover the hidden reasons and plans that propelled him on his voyage of discovery, and how God ultimately frustrated some of those plans and made others fruitful.

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Dr. Taylor Marshall , 332 pages, Hard Cover

Dr. Taylor Marshall - HC -332 pages

Foreword by Bishop Athanasius Schneider

It took nearly two millennia for the enemies of the Catholic Church to realize they could not successfully attack the Church from the outside. Indeed, countless nemeses from Nero to Napoleon succeeded only in creating sympathy and martyrs for our Catholic Faith. 

That all changed in the mid-19th century, when clandestine societies populated by Modernists and Marxists hatched a plan to subvert the Catholic Church from within. Their goal: to change Her doctrine, Her liturgy, and Her mission.

In this captivating and carefully documented book, Dr. Taylor Marshall pulls back the curtain on their nefarious plan, showing how these enemies of Christ strategically infiltrated the seminaries, then the priesthood, then the episcopacy, and eventually the cardinal-electors – all with the eventual goal of electing one of their own as pope.

You’ll come to see that the seemingly endless scandals plaguing the Church are not the result, as so many think, of cultural changes, or of Vatican II, but rather the natural consequences of an orchestrated demonic plot to destroy the Church.

In these gripping pages, you’ll discover:

  • How popes of the 1800s discovered a plot to infiltrate the Church.
  • How theologians suspected of being Modernists became Vatican powerbrokers.
  • How modifications in Catholic canon law enabled predator priests like Theodore McCarrick to stay in positions of power.
  • How Our Lady of La Salette gave a prophetic warning of the plot to infiltrate the Church.
  • How the chief architect of liturgical reforms was discovered to be a Freemason.
  • Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s role in exposing the Communist infiltration of the priesthood.
  • How the confusing history of the Third Secret of Fatima relates to the infiltration of the Catholic Church.
  • That Pope Paul VI explained that Vatican II was not infallible.
  • How Pope Paul VI revoked the voting rights of cardinals over 80, thus guaranteeing that all voting cardinals were appointed by him.
  • How the criteria for sainthood shifted from a person’s historical acts to his personal beliefs.
  • The complex roots of the St. Gallen Mafia and how they plotted to modify Catholic doctrine and elect Pope Francis.
 
 

"Riveting. What an incredible work of brilliance and generosity. "

John-Henry Westen
Editor-in-Chief, LifeSiteNews.com
 

"We must examine the very roots of the present crisis, which, to a decisive extent, can be identified – as Taylor Marshall has done in this book – as an infiltration of the Church by an unbelieving world."

Bishop Athanasius Schneider
Auxiliary Bishop, Astana, Kazakhstan
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Marie de Sainte-Hermine

Marie de Sainte-Hermine - PB

Plunged into the disasters following the murder of King Louis XVI, Marie de Sainte-Hermine shares the eye-witness account of her noble family’s struggle against the tyranny of the Revolution. She tells of her gilded childhood, the Vendean War of 1793, the massacres and atrocities of the revolutionaries, and the sinister prison of Nantes where her family paid the ultimate price. In spite of the darkness brought on by the Terror, the light and power of Christian nobility and virtue always endures. This story will inspire all who read it and stands, to this day, as an enduring example of Catholic heroism in times of persecution and war. 

This is a Catholic historical adventure filled with intrigue, disguises, escape, betrayal, revenge, danger, death, and love. It exemplifies the Catholic ideals for marriage and shows how God must be served above all else even when revenge and hate are common everywhere.

“In reading the history of your ancestors who have suffered so much here below, you will understand better that there is but one irreparable disaster: to betray one’s duty and to lose one’s soul. You will understand that the greatest evils of this life last but for a time, and that the Christian must keep his eyes ever raised toward Heaven…Always keep the Faith, the Faith for which your ancestors died; it is the most precious of all goods.” —Marie de Sainte-Hermine


Reprinted countless times in French, this is, to our knowledge - the first English edition ever.
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Dom Guy Marie Oury, O.S.B. , PB 440 pages

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 invited
all Christians to experience a spiritual participation in the liturgy, “the initial source of the true Christian spirit.” Dom
Guéranger worked to instill knowledge and love for the origins of Christianity and the Church of the Fathers, thus preparing a
fertile 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, and
rightly so, that God’s mystery could not be treated as were the human sciences—He transcended them. Throughout his entire
life, Dom Guéranger never stopped protesting against “the diminished truths” mentioned in Psalm 11:2.

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1930278071, Dom Prosper Guéranger , 404, Paperback

Also Available as Ebook

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.

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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.

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