This inspiring book unveils the incomparable history of the Catholics of Ireland, who clung valiantly to the Faith for hundreds of years through some of the worst persecutions ever inflicted on a people. Their unrelenting love of the Most Blessed Sacrament is a clarion call for us in these times when attendance at Holy Mass has waned and the desacralization of the liturgy advances.
From the golden hour in which St. Patrick, as bishop, said his first Mass on Irish soil down to the coming of the Normans, love of the Blessed Eucharist was one of the dominant characteristics of the Irish race. Even during the Protestant Reformation, with its monastery closures, confiscation of Church treasures, and universally hostile treatment of Catholics, King Henry VIII nevertheless left one thing untouched — the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. But the attacks would soon begin.
You will be astonished by the assaults on the Mass during Queen Elizabeth’s “reign of terror,” which resulted in the martyrdom of more than two hundred Irish Catholics — many killed in the sanctuary! James I continued the rule of terror, which was brought to new depths of cruelty by the ruthless Oliver Cromwell.
In these pages, Fr. Augustine Hayden reveals a myriad of shocking details that are highly relevant to our time, including:
What the Council of Regency did to Protestantize the Mass (Has history repeated itself?)
“The Mass was the focus of the enemy’s hatred,” wrote Fr. Augustine, “and it was also the magnet of the people’s devotion. Masses infinite in churches, Masses in houses, Masses in every corner — these were the ‘crimes’ with which the people of this country were charged.”
You will see why the heroic Catholics of Ireland believed that the Holy Mass and the Real Presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament are worth cherishing — even unto death. Amid war, starvation, and relentless cruelty, our Eucharistic King gave the Irish the graces they needed to remain steadfast and become a bastion of devotion for the world.
J. J. Barry - 516 pages - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB
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.
By Dom Guy Marie Oury, O.S.B. Translated by Hope Heaney - 440 pages - EBOOK - PDF, EPub & Kindle.
After the devastation of the French Revolution, the first abbot of Solesmes launched the ecclesial movement which invitedall Christians to experience a spiritual participation in the liturgy, “the initial source of the true Christian spirit.” DomGuéranger worked to instill knowledge and love for the origins of Christianity and the Church of the Fathers, thus preparing afertile and fruitful “return to the sources” for the entire Church.
He defined himself as “a man of the spiritual order,” opposed in every way to the naturalism of his era. It seemed to him, andrightly so, that God’s mystery could not be treated as were the human sciences—He transcended them. Throughout his entirelife, Dom Guéranger never stopped protesting against “the diminished truths” mentioned in Psalm 11:2.
Volume One: The Church and the World in which the Church was Founded - EBOOK - PDF
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 FoundedVolume Two: The Church and the World the Church CreatedVolume Three: The Church and the Revolt against it of the Church-created World
Volume Two: The Church and the World the Church Created - EBOOK - PDF
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 Three: The Church and the Revolt against it of the Church-created World- EBOOK - PDF
Msgr. Philip Hughes - PB
Pio Nono:A Study in European Politics and Religion in the Nineteenth Century
by E. E. Y. Hales - 378 pages - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB
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.
By Fanchon Royer - PB - 304 pages - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB
Miguel Pro was born in 1891. He was the third of eleven children, four of whom had died as infants or young children. He entered the Jesuit novitiate at El Llano on August 15, 1911, was ordained in 1925, and executed in 1927. In 1952—just 25 years later—his cause came up for beatification and he was beatified by Pope John Paul II on September 25, 1988. At the time of Padre Pro’s death, Mexico was under rule of the fiercely anti-clerical and anti-catholic President Plutarch Elias Calles who had begun what writer Graham Greene called the “fiercest persecution of religion anywhere since the reign of Elizabeth.” During those years of the Masonic-Communist persecution, the Mexican people rose up in a great war to defend their nation and the rights of the Church and of Christ the King. Their battle-cry was Viva Christo Rey! Blessed Padre Pro’s martyrdom came at the height of the war and it typifies the period of the Cristero rebellion and its heroes. He took no part in the war, but spent his life ministering to the poor and faithful Mexicans.
He was one of the earliest combatants of communism and a pioneer “priest worker.” While observing the Mexican miners’ needs as assistant to his father, a mine operator, he first recognized his vocation. After entering the Society of Jesus, and spending time in Belgium and Spain for studies, he fell into the company of priests and seminarians who were preparing the way for the apostolate to the worker. When he returned to Mexico at the height of the anti-Catholic persecution, his was a mission to the laborers and to the poorest Mexicans.
By John F. McManus - 244 pages PB - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB
This book, written by a prominent and well known Catholic American, isthe product of almost seventy years of close observation and deep study in aturbulent world of rapid change and degradation of church and society.Recently, the courageous Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò published an acknowledgmentof the problems discussed in this book in his now world famous Open Letter toPresident Trump where he spoke of Freemasonry and the ‘deep church’. Becausethat letter appeared as this book was going to press, The Deep Church Revealedwas added to the original title as a fitting description of its content.
The revealing begins with a description of the Enlightenment philosophersand their anti-Catholic hatred, and the author proceeds from there to detail inforty-one astonishing chapters the story of how those men and the organizationsthey inspired grew and and spread their pernicious doctrines throughout theworld and the Church.
The plans that these Freemasonic organizations laid were remarkably successful,even though vigorously opposed by every Pope for over 200 years. “Anenemy hath done this” Our Lord said in the parable of the wheat and the cockles.Truly, this can be said today of the situation in His Church. The holy andvigilant Padre Pio told Fr. Luigi Villa in 1963 when he assigned Fr. Villa the taskof exposing these enemies “Courage, courage, courage! For the Church is alreadyinvaded by Freemasonry that has already reached the Pope’s slippers.”We are thankful to Mr. McManus for telling this story briefly, succinctly,and with unbounded love for our Holy Mother the Church. He advises us,like Saint Peter, “Be sober and watchful, for your adversary the devil goethabout like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Whom ye shouldresist, fortes in fide.”
Translated by Helen Waddell - 312 Pages - EBOOK - PDF
For several hundred years, in the youth of the Church, countless men, and a few women, fled the world and flocked to the deserted places of this earth wishing to found (and to find) their lives in God alone. Their experiences transformed not only their own lives, but also in many ways, the world they left behind. The beauty and timelessness of their stories has captured the imagination of men throughout the ages that have followed. To live in search only of God and the eternal verities is a theme that men never weary contemplating and often imitate. The original of these translations is the Latin of the Vitae Patrum, a vast collection of the lives and sayings of the Desert Fathers, edited by the learned Rosweyde, and printed at the Plantin press in Antwerp in 1615. The original ran to 1600 pages. These extracts assembled by Helen Waddell are among the best.
G. K. Chesterton - 220 Pages - EBOOK - PDF
Edited and Published posthumously by Frank SheedIn 1933 Hitler came into power. In 1936, G. K. Chesterton died. In between, Chesterton kept his eyes steadily on the Nazi movement, seeing and foreseeing everything—even to the agreement of Germany and Russia to divide Poland.
Week after week he came back to one aspect or another of the danger: Prussianism as a spirit poisoning Germany, Hitlerism as Prussianism, the special peril (unique in human history) that lies in racism, the Jewish roots of Hitlerism, the vital function of Poland, and the elements among ourselves that made for the increase of Hitler’s power—especially the pacifism that made war inevitable. It is not too much to say that this inevitablility of war was the dominating theme of the last years of Chesterton’s life. Certainly it was never far from his pen.
380 pages - EBOOK - PDF, Kindle, & EPUB
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.
Bishop David Arias- EBOOK - PDF
This is an American history book written from the Spanish perspective. The author, Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Newark, NJ, David Arias, is a church historian, born and educated in Leon, Spain. This magnificent chronological itinerary through the history of the USA from 1492 to the present should be read in American history class and in every Catholic American home. Without it you are missing a very large part of the true picture of our nation's history. This is a great book for Catholic homeschoolers and highschool students.
Dr. Godefroid Kurth - with an Introduction by Father Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp. — Small book 64 pages
Is not the strategy of the enemies of God there to teach us a lesson? They want to destroy the faith in the hearts of individuals, it is true, but they direct still more vigorous efforts to the elimination of religion from social institutions. Even one defeat of God in this domain means the weakening, if not the ruin, of the faith in the souls of many”
This short essay on the workingman’s guilds by Professor Kurth was translated into English by Father Denis Fahey, who also wrote the introduction included here. The introduction is longer than the article since it introduces briefly the entire plan for a Christian social order, of which the economic life of the laboring man is only a portion.
When speaking of the economic life of a Christian society the most important principle to consider is that it—the economic life of society— must be subject to the moral law before all else. This subjection must be the first principle of the structure of society’s economic life and not simply something engrafted as an afterthought. Both politics and economics are disciplines subsidiary to the science of ethics. Without this subjection nations become ensnared by the terrible modern errors known as capitalism, communism, or socialism, all of which amount to the same thing, the destruction of the society operated according to their principles, and the end of Christian civilization.
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!
