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.

25 Essays by Robert D. Hickson - HC - 640 pages

Archbishop Vigano's Preface

Memory is a fundamental element of a people’s identity, civilization and
culture: a society without memory, whose patrimony consists solely of a
present without a past, is condemned to have no future. It is alarming that
this loss of collective memory affects not only Christian nations, but also
seriously afflicts the Catholic Church herself and, consequently, Catholics.
This amnesia affects all social classes and is not the result of chance, but of
systematic work on the part of those who, as enemies of the True, Good
and Beautiful, must erase any ray of these divine attributes from even the
most marginal aspects of social life, from our idioms, from memories of
our childhood and from the stories of our grandparents. The Orwellian
action of artificially remodeling the past has become commonplace in the
contemporary world, to the point that a class of high school students
are unable to recognize an altarpiece depicting a scene from the life of
Christ 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 would
have immediately identified the Baptism of the Lord in the Jordan or
Saint Jerome or Saint Mary Magdalene are capable of seeing only two men
along a river, an old man with a lion and a woman with a vase. Reading
the pages of Dante, Manzoni or one of the great Christian writers of the
past, many Catholics can no longer grasp the moral and transcendent
sense of a culture that is no longer their common heritage, a jealously
guarded 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 the
Revolution, the dusty Masonic ideological repertoire, and the iconography
of a supposed freedom won by the guillotine, along with the persecution
of the Church, the martyrdom of Catholics in Mexico and Spain, the
end of the tyranny of Kings and Popes and the triumph of bankers and
viii Gratitude, Contemplation, and the Worth of Catholic Literature
usurers. A lineage of kings, saints, and heroes is ignored by its heirs, who
stoop to boasting about their ancestors who were criminals, usurpers,
and seditious traitors: never has falsification reached the point of such
incomprehensible perversion, and it is evident that the desire to artificially
create such ancestry is the necessary premise for the barbarization of the
offspring, which is now practically accomplished.
We must also recognize that this removal has found significant
encouragement 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 instilled
in the faithful even by the Hierarchy since Vatican II. The ancient apostolic
liturgy, on which centuries of poetic compositions, mosaics, frescoes,
paintings, sculptures, chiseled vases, illuminated chorales, embroidered
vestments, plainchants and polyphony have been shaped, has been
proscribed. In its place we now have a squalid rite without roots, born
from the pen of conspirators dipped in the inkwell of Protestantism; music
that is no longer sacred but profane; tasteless liturgical vestments and
sacred vessels made of common material. And as a grey counterpoint to
the hymns of St. Ambrose and St. Thomas, we now have poor paraphrases
without metrics and without soul, grotesque paintings and disturbing
sculptures. The removal of the admirable writings of the Fathers of the
Church, the works of the mystics, the erudite dissertations of theologians
and philosophers and, in the final analysis, of Sacred Scripture itself –
whose divine inspiration is sometimes denied, sacrilegiously affirming
that it is merely of human origin – have all constituted necessary steps
of being able to boast of the credit of worldly novelties, which before
those monuments of human ingenuity enlightened by Grace appear as
miserable forgeries.
This absence of beauty is the necessary counterpart to an absence of
holiness, for where the Lord of all things is forgotten and banished, not
even the appearance of Beauty survives. It is not only Beauty that has
been banished: Catholic Truth has been banished along with it, in all its
crystalline splendor, in all its dazzling consistency, in all its irrepressible
capacity to permeate every sphere of civilized living. Because the Truth
is eternal, immutable and divisive: it existed yesterday, it exists today
and it will exist tomorrow, as eternal and immutable and divisive as the
Word of God.
Certainly, behind this induced amnesia, there is a Trinitarian heresy. And
where the Deceiver lurks, the eternal Truth of God must be obscured in
order 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 the
depositum fidei ask forgiveness from the world for sins never committed by
our fathers – in the name of God, Religion or the Fatherland – supporting
the widest and most articulated historical forgery carried out by the
enemies of God. And this betrays not only the ignorance of History which
is already culpable, but also culpable bad faith and the malicious will to
deceive the simple ones.
Rediscovering memory, even in literature, is a meritorious and necessary
work for the restoration of Christianity, a restoration that is needed
today more than ever if we want to entrust to our children a legacy to be
preserved and handed down as a tangible sign of God’s intervention in
the history of the human race: how much Providence has accomplished
over the centuries – and that art has immortalized by depicting miracles,
the victories of the Christians over the Turk, sovereigns kneeling at the
feet of the Virgin, patron saints of famous universities and prosperous
corporations – can be renewed today and especially tomorrow, only if we
can rediscover our past and understand it in the light of the mystery of
the Redemption.
This book proposes the noble purpose of restoring Catholic memory,
bringing it back to its ancient splendor, that is, the substance of a
harmonious and organic past that has grown and still lives today, just as
the hereditary traits of a child are found developed in the adult man, or
as the vital principle of the seed is found in the sap of the tree and in the
pulp of the fruit. Robert Hickson rightly shows us, in the restoration of
memory, the way to rediscover the shared faith that shapes the traits of a
shared Catholic culture.
In this sense it is significant – I would say extremely appropriate, even if
only by analogy – to have also included Christian literature among the
Sacramentals, applying to it the same action as that of blessed water, the
glow of the candles, the ringing of bells, the liturgical chant: the invocation
of the Virgin in the thirty-third canto of Dante’s Paradiso, the dialogue
of Cardinal Borromeo with the Innominato, and a passage by Chesterton
all make Catholic truths present in our minds and, in some way, they
realize what they mean and can influence the spiritual life, expanding
and completing it. Because of this mystery of God’s unfathomable mercy
we are touched in our souls, moved to tears, inspired by Good, spurred
to conversion. But this is also what happens when we contemplate an
altarpiece or listen to a composition of sacred music, in which a ray of
divine perfection bursts into the greyness of everyday life and shows us the
splendor of the Kingdom that awaits us.
The author writes: “We are called to the commitment to recover the life and
full memory of the Body of Christ, even if in our eyes we cannot do much to
rebuild that Body”. But the Lord does not ask us to perform miracles: He
invites us to make them possible, to create the conditions in our souls and
in our social bodies so that the wonders of divine omnipotence may be
manifested. To open ourselves to the past, to the memory of God’s great
actions in history, is an essential condition for making it possible for us to
become aware of our identity and our destiny today so that we may restore
the Kingdom of Christ tomorrow.
+ Carlo Maria Viganò
Titular Archbishop of Ulpiana
Apostolic Nuncio
28 August 2020
Saint Augustine
Bishop, Confessor, and Doctor of the Church

The Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent - Hardcover - 608 pages - 6" x 9"

Catechism of the Council of Trent for Parish Priests - Issued by Order of Pope St. Pius V
Translated by order of Pope St. Pius V.
English translation and notes by John A. McHugh, O.P. and Charles J. Callan, O.P.
Easy to read modern typesetting.

Foreword by Charles A. Coulombe

“Catechesis,” in the sense of teaching the truths of the Faith, is as old as the Catholic Church; Christ Himself was the first and best of our catechists. Indeed, catechesis and evangelisation are inseparable, and always have been. But “catechisms,” in the way we think of them, are a relatively new phenomenon. It was in fact the Protestant Revolt that launched the genre–starting with Martin Luther’s large and short catechisms, in which he laid out his mixture of truth and heresy in a simple question and answer format. In rapid succession, this method was used by Calvinists and others for the same purpose–Cranmer even composed one for the Book of Common Prayer. It turned out to be a devastatingly effective method. Not too surprisingly, beleaguered Catholics responded in kind, St. Peter Canisius, for example, producing one in 1555.
Aware of this background, the Fathers of the Council of Trent decided that a basic catechism explaining the truths of the Faith was an urgent necessity. At the suggestion of St. Charles Borromeo, on February 26, 1562 the Council Fathers resolved that “to apply a salutary remedy to this great and pernicious evil, and thinking that the definition of the principal Catholic doctrines was not enough for the purpose, resolved also to publish a formulary and method for teaching the rudiments of the faith, to be used by all legitimate pastors and teachers.” Thus, the idea was not to publish a popular catechism for everyone to read, but to produce a resource that would allow priests to use it in teaching their people. To be taken primarily from the Council texts, Pius IV entrusted the composition of the work to four theologians: the distinguished Papal diplomat, Archbishop Leonardo Marini of Lanciano; the Knight of Malta, Archbishop Muzio Calini of Zara; Bishop Egidio Foscherari of Modena, renowned for his work with orphans; and the Portuguese Dominican Francisco Foreiro, theologian, Biblicist, and close collaborator with several of his country’s Kings.
St. Charles Borromeo supervised the whole work, and it appeared at last in 1566.
The Council Fathers intended that their catechism should have a definite weight. Thus we read in the seventh canon, De Reformatione, of Sess. XXIV: “That the faithful may approach the Sacraments with greater reverence and devotion, the Holy Synod charges all the bishops about to administer them to explain their operation and use in a way adapted to the understanding of the people; to see, moreover, that their parish priests observe the same rule piously and prudently, making use for their explanations, where necessary and convenient, of the vernacular tongue; and conforming to the form to be prescribed by the Holy Synod in its instructions (catechesis) for the several Sacraments: the bishops shall have these instructions carefully translated into the vulgar tongue and explained by all parish priests to their flocks...”.
Although subsequent centuries would see any number of Catholic catechisms written for the laity by various writers and authorities, this Roman or Tridentine catechism remained the basic standard and the most authoritative – not least because so much of it was taken directly from the Council. In 1979, Pope John Paul II spoke of it as the “Roman Catechism, which is also known by the name of that council [Trent] and which is a work of the first rank as a summary of Christian teaching and traditional theology for use by priests.”
Of course, it was John Paul II who commissioned the Catechism of the Catholic Church which in the minds of many has replaced or eclipsed the Roman Catechism. But this would be a grave mistake. Whereas most of the former comes more or less directly from the Council and so has a certain level of solemnity, the CCC is decidedly a mixed bag. What was written about the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church by its authors is also true of the CCC: “In studying this Compendium, it is good to keep in mind that the citations of Magisterial texts are taken from documents of differing authority. Alongside council documents and encyclicals there are also papal addresses and documents drafted by offices of the Holy See. As one knows, but it seems to bear repeating, the reader should be aware that different levels of teaching authority are involved.” For reasons having to do with modern fashions in theology, there are a few places where the two documents contradict each other quite plainly.
The most notable of these is the question of the necessity of Baptism. The Roman Catechism’s Question XXX, “Baptism is necessary to all unto salvation” states that “If the knowledge of the matters which have been hitherto explained is to be deemed most useful to the faithful, nothing can appear also more necessary than that they be taught that the law of baptism is prescribed by our Lord to all, insomuch that they, unless they be regenerated unto God through the grace of baptism, whether their parents be Christian or infidel, are born to eternal misery and perdition. The pastor therefore must give a frequent exposition of these words of the Gospel: Except a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” The CCC, on the other hand, for the same question, tells us “The Lord himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation. He also commands his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to all nations and to baptize them. Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament. The Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude; this is why she takes care not to neglect the mission she has received from the Lord to see that all who can be baptized are ‘reborn of water and the Spirit.’ God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments. The Church has always held the firm conviction that those who suffer death for the sake of the faith without having received Baptism are baptized by their death for and with Christ. This Baptism of blood, like the desire for Baptism, brings about the fruits of Baptism without being a sacrament. For catechumens who die before their Baptism, their explicit desire to receive it, together with repentance for their sins, and charity, assures them the salvation that they were not able to receive through the sacrament. ‘Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery.’ Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired Baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity. As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus' tenderness toward children which caused him to say: ‘Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,’ allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church's call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism.”
These two statements are in large flat out contradictory (indeed, there are internal contradictions in the CCC’s own text). But the Roman Catechism simply reflects explicitly the defined teaching of the Council of Trent, whereas–as a perusal of the CCC’s footnotes shows–the latter document’s sources are of far less authority. Indeed, the most contradictory statements are not footnoted at all, but must be assumed to be the opinions of the CCC’s authors–and thus, in and of themselves, of no weight when contradicting the Roman Catechism.
But it would be a second error to presume on that account that the CCC is worthless. Save in those very few areas where it contradicts Trent, it explores in a very orthodox way many issues that have arisen since Trent, and also cites Eastern Catholic teaching and worship in a way that helps bring out very clearly the universality of Catholic doctrine.
Those things having been said, it would seem to this writer that the well-prepared Catholic catechist would begin by reading and making his own the Roman Catechism, in the light of which he would then read the CCC. Afterwards, he could then use the St. John Neumann, Baltimore, or any other catechism for actual teaching in the proper light.
But the Roman Catechism remains the gold standard and the essential place to start for anyone undertaking the essential role of catechist. Loreto Publications is to be thanked for once again making easily available to the public an essential document in the life of the modern Church that is only too often allowed–as with so many other things–to slide into obscurity.
Charles A. Coulombe
Trumau, Austria
July 1, 2022
Feast of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus

Sidney Ohlhausen - Illustrated - Softcover - 462 pages

This collection of documents and letters grant us an intimate look into the life of an extraordinary priest.
Rev. Haydock is most often remembered today as the author of the famous “Haydock” bible which contains the Douay-Rheims text along with the copious footnotes and commentary by Haydock himself. His purpose was not merely to give the persecuted Catholics of England the best in scriptural text and exegesis taken from the Fathers and Doctors for their own education and edification, but also to give them scholarly ammunition to assist them in the conversion of their protestant family and friends who had been so confused by the various heretical texts and sermons available to them.
The life of Rev. George Leo Haydock (1774–1849) neatly enclosed some of the most remarkable decades in the history of the post-Reformation English Catholic community, as its lay and clerical members moved forward from an ad hoc tolerance to a fuller legal equality. Three years after Haydock’s death, in 1852 St John Newman (1801–90) was to hail the period that took in his own conversion in 1845 as embracing a ‘second spring’, in which England’s Catholic Church re-emerged from centuries of oppression and obscurity, since the Tudor Reformation of the 16th century.

Mary Perkins - Cloth Hardcover - 232 pages

Mary Perkins worked for Sheed & Ward publishers in the 1930s and was a close friend of Fr. Leonard Feeney who encourged her to publish this book. It is without doubt the best Latin textbook for a neophyte who wishes to learn well the language of Holy Mother Church. The Latin is taken directly from the Missal and as a teaching tool this book is simple and thorough and not intimidating. Highly recommended, especially for Catholic homeschoolers or anyone new to our language.       

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.

Senior's well-known and popular treatise is a first-rate scholarly and impassioned expose, linking up the causes of cultural decline, ignorance, and decay across the disciplines of literature, music, and the liberal arts. Senior diagnoses the rot in our culture and provides, in the clearest and most profound terms, a candid and frank assessment.

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.

1954 Imprimatur Complete edition - Latin & English - PB 5" x 7.75" - 490 pages

This edition has large type and is much more complete than the small edition found on this website at {http://www.loretopubs.org/the-little-office-of-the-blessed-virgin-mary.html}.

"Among its many practises of piety, the eager devotion of the Christian faithful toward the holy Mother of God has treasured for centuries an exercise by which the Virgin Mother of God is especially honored, and which is called the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This devotion has gained a greater following in recent times since the daily recitation of this Office is prescribed by the constitutions of many Congregations, both of Lay Brothers and of Sisters—a regulation meriting the highest praise."     Pope Pius XII

Professor Romano Amerio - PB 816 pages
Romano Amerio, Italian by nationality, was a man of broad and classical erudition, who taught philosophy, Greek and Latin at the Academy of Lugano, Switzerland from 1928 to 1970. He was an episcopal consultant to the Central Preparatory Commission of Vatican II and was a peritus for the Bishop of Lugano during the Council. A true insider to the Council’s activities. He was a friend of the late Cardinal Siri of Genoa and died in 1997. This is the best book written so far on the philosopy and theology of the Council.
334 topic-sections in forty-two chapters covering, among many other things:
The Crisis, The Crises of the Church, The Council: Before, During and After, Paul VI, The Priesthood, Youth, Women, Somatolatry, Penance, Religious and Social Movements, Schools, Catechetics, Religious Orders, Pyrrhonism, Dialogue, Mobilism, Faith, Hope and Charity, Natural Law, Divorce, Sodomy, Abortion, Suicide, Death Penalty, War, Situation Ethics, Globality and Graduality, The Autonomy of Values, Work, Technology and Contemplation, Civilization and Secondary Christianity, Democracy in the Church, Theology and Philosophy, Ecumenism, Baptism, Eucharist, Liturgical Reform, Matrimony, Theodicy, Eschatology, and MUCH MUCH more!

Garnering what liturgical fragments he could from the words of the New Testament, and what tradition has provided from apostolic times and patristic times, Father Fortescue skillfully demonstrates the continuity of religious ritual rooted in the holy sacrifice as ordained by the Eternal High Priest and Victim, the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. The one sacrifice, liturgically re-presented in an unbloody manner, although it assumed devotional variations within the principal sees of ancient Christendom, always maintained the same essential form whatever the time or place it was offered in the Catholic world. As this great scholar proves in this admirable study, all Catholic rites come from the same apostolic parentage. If you love the holy Mass you will find this book a worthy companion to your missal. This book describes the ancient Roman Liturgy not the Mass in use since 1969.

The most popular autobiography ever written may well have been that of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Unlike the stigmatist Padre Pio, who is the only saint of modern times to compare in popularity with the Little Flower'’s universal appeal, Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus, during her mortal life (1873-1897), was hardly known outside the walls of her Carmelite cloister. And, she may have never been well known this side of heaven had she not been ordered by her superiors to write a personal journal of her own exquisite growth and fruition in the spiritual life – a growth that never idled from the time she was three. “From the age of three years,” she testified, “I never refused anything to the Great God.” Before the youngest child of Louis and Zelie Martin left this world, she prophesied that her greatest active work would “begin” in heaven and that she would employ herself in beatitude “doing good upon earth.” From there, just as she promised, she has never ceased to “let fall a shower of roses” upon all who invoke her. Such devotion of the universal church, as that bestowed upon Sister Thérèse of the Child Jesus, was quickly rewarded by the Vicar of Christ. She was canonized only twenty-eight years after her death by Pope Benedict XV.

Loreto Publications is thrilled to publish Carmelite Father Albert Dolan’'s unique collection of eight monographs, each of which deals with the temporal spiritual journey of our chosen vessel of grace, either as the saint saw herself in the eyes of God, or as she was intimately known by her parents, four sibling sisters, fellow religious, childhood friends and others whose lives she touched after her death. One might call this redolent nosegay of inspirational testimonies, an anthology, in the Greek sense of that word, for anthos literally means a “gathering of flowers.” In order to compose his octave of devotion, Father Dolan traveled, in 1924, to France: to Normandy’'s Alencon, where Saint Thérèse was born, to her family home in Buissonnets, to the Carmel at Lisieux, and to other French towns. Then, he went to Rome, where he and Pope Pius XI had a mutually productive discussion of his apostolate to make the “Little Way” of the Little Flower better known in homes and monasteries in America. At the Carmelite convent he was blessed by priceless interviews with Saint Thérèse'’s three sisters (who were nuns there), and one of her teachers. At Caen, he visited a fourth sister, who had joined the Visitation order. One third of this book is dedicated to these precious recollections gathered from her living siblings. In fact, one of the eight monographs, “Book Five,” is completely devoted to the Little Flower’'s saintly mother Zelie, who died when Thérèse was only four years old.

A New Statement of an Old Ideal

Obliterating the notion that there are only two choices - right and left - for perspectives on social and economic life, this apologia by twelve Catholics for a socio-economic life based upon the Social Doctrine of the Catholic Church offers an outline of independent operator-owners, regulative guilds, and economic science subortinated to morality and the genuine needs of mankind.

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.

Fourteen Epochal Documents by Pope Leo XIII on the Social Teachings

Edited and annotated by Fr. Joseph Husslein, S. J. - Cloth Hardcover -300 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.