A Dogmatic Catechism, from the Italian of [Giuseppe] Frassinetti, revised and edited by the Oblate Fathers of St. Charles, with a Preface by the Archbishop of Westminster [Henry Edward Manning] (London: R. Washbourne, 1872). [N.B., The text appears to have been translated from the 6th Italian edition.] May be read online, and available in various formats (pdf, epub, mobi/kindle, etc.), at Internet Archive and Open Library. Also available at Hathi Trust Digital Library and Google Books (though the latter appears to require logging in).
Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, with the history of the devotion to her, from the French of the Abbe Orsini; to which is added Meditations on the Litany of the Virgin, from the French of the Abbe Edouard Barthe; also Poems on the Litany of Loreto, from the German of the Countess Hahn-Hahn, translated by the Very Rev. F.C. Husenbeth (London, New York: Virtue and Company). May be read online, and available in pdf, epub, mobi, and other formats, at Internet Archive.
[N.B., It is mistakenly indexed as Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, with the History of the Devotion to Her; Completed by the Traditions of the East, the Writings of the Fathers, and the Private History of the Jews, a title that refers to a different translation of the Abbe Orisini’s work, by Mrs. J. Sadlier.]
Posted on the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary, instituted after the victory of Christian forces at the Battle of Vienna (12 September 1683); and in remembrance of the San Patricios. For other legally free ebooks, you may access the List of Free eBooks (Arranged by Title) and the List of Free eBooks (Grouped by Subject).
Théologie Séraphique: Extraite et Traduite des Oeuvres de Saint Bonaventure; Contenant “L’Itineraire de l’Ame vers Dieu”, “Le Traité du Mepris du Monde”, “L’Ecuelle d’Or des Vertus”, “Le Bouquet Spirituel”, “Le Traité des Vertus”, et “L’Incendie de l’Amour”, par l’Abbé Celeste Alix, et par Acc. Alix (Paris: Jacques LeCoffre et Cie., 1853). Disponible dans Internet Archive.
On the anniversary of the issuance of the Apostolic Letter Given Motu Proprio “Summorum Pontificum” on the Use of the Roman Liturgy Prior to the Reform of 1970, by Pope Benedict XVI (7 July 2007), for which we offer our own prayer of thanksgiving:
Our God and Savior Jesus Christ, we thank You for giving us Summorum Pontificum through Your faithful vicar Benedict, who thus affirmed and strengthened our liberty to celebrate the living Forms of the Roman Rite. Grant that we, who are nourished by the liturgy and tradition of Your Body the Church, may be ever filled with Your grace and truth, that we might remain in Your love until death and dwell with You forever in heaven. Amen.
The Glories of Divine Grace: a free rendering of the original treatise of P. Eusebius Nieremberg, S. J, by Matthias Joseph Scheeben, translated from the fourth revised German edition by a Benedictine Monk of St. Meinrad’s Abbey, Ind., with the consent of the author and the permission of the superior (New York, Cincinnati, St. Louis: Benziger Brothers; London: R. Washbourne; Dublin: M.H. Gill & Son, 1886). With Imprimatur for the original and approbation for the translation. Available at Open Library and Internet Archive.
See also:
The Catholic Doctrine of Grace, by George Hayward Joyce (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1920). With Imprimatur. Available at Open Library and Internet Archive.
The Catholic Doctrine on Justification: Explained and Vindicated, by the Right Rev. Francis Patrick Kenrick (Philadelphia, Eugene Cummiskey, 1841). Available in various formats (pdf, epub, mobi/kindle, etc.) at Internet Archive and Open Library.
“But How ARE Catholics Saved?” from the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
“Salvation from the Perspective of the Early Church Fathers” by Chris Erickson,
“Justification By Faith” by Dr. William Marshner,
“NOT By Faith Alone” by James Akin, and
“Faith Alone, Faith and Works, or Is It Something Else?” by Marcus C. Grodi
Dogmatic Theology VII. Grace, Actual and Habitual: A Dogmatic Treatise, by Joseph Pohle, translated by Arthur Preuss (St. Louis, Mo.: Herder, 1919). With Imprimatur. Available in PDF, Full Text and DjVu at Internet Archive. Another copy of the 1919 edition with Imprimatur is available in PDF, Full text, and EPUB formats at Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg. [NB, These are the best PDF copies online.] Still another copy of the 1919 edition is available in mutiple formats at Open Library and Internet Archive. The 1915 edition with Imprimatur is available in various formats at Open Library and Internet Archive.
Outlines of Dogmatic Theology, 2nd edition, in 3 volumes, by Sylvester Joseph Hunter, S.J. (London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909). With Imprimatur. Volume III (Actual Grace, Justification, the Sacraments, the Last Things) is available at Internet Archive and Open Library.
The Sacraments Explained According to the Teaching and Doctrine of the Catholic Church; with an Introductory Treatise on Grace, by Arthur Devine (London: R. & T. Washbourn, 1918). With Imprimatur. Available at Open Library and Internet Archive.
On the Feast of Saint Prosper of Aquitaine; and on the anniversary of publication of the Augsburg Confession expounding the Lutheran heresy.
“He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them: he it is that loveth me. And he that loveth me, shall be loved of my Father: and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him… If any one love me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him…
“I am the vine: you the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing. If any one remaineth not in me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him up, and cast him into the fire, and he burneth…
Spiritual Conferences on the Mysteries of Faith and the Interior Life, by Rev. Henry Collins (London: R. Washbourne, 1875). With Imprimatur. May be read online, and available in pdf, mobi, epub, and other formats, at Internet Archive; and also available at Google Books and Google Play Store.
Spiritual Conferences, by Rev. Henry Collins, edited by Rev. Joseph Degen, with an Introduction by Bishop John Keily (London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1920). With Imprimatur. May be read online, and available in pdf, mobi, epub, and other formats, at Internet Archive.
On the Feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist in the Roman Rite.
“He said: I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet, Isaias, said… I baptize with water: but there hath stood one in the midst of you, whom you know not. The same is he that shall come after me, who is preferred before me: the latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to loose.” (St. John i, 23, 26-27)
Growth in Holiness; or, The Progress of the Spiritual Life, by Frederick William Faber, 1814-1863 (Baltimore: John Murphy and Co.; Pittsburgh: George Quigley, 1855). With approbation. Available in pdf, epub, mobi, and other formats at Internet Archive; and available at Hathitrust Digital Library and Google Books.
On the Feast of Saint Ephrem the Syrian, Doctor of the Church, in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.
“Would that other ecclesiastical teachers learn from him how skilfully, how diligently they must work in preaching the doctrine of Christ! And indeed the piety of the faithful has nothing stable and advantageous except to adhere entirely to the mysteries and precepts of the faith. Those who legitimately teach the Sacred Scriptures are warned by the example of the Edessine not to distort the Sacred Scriptures to the good pleasure of their own inclinations, nor, in investigating them, to depart a finger’s breadth from the constant interpretation of the Church.” (Pope Benedict XV, Encyclical on St. Ephrem the Syrian “Principi Apostolorum Petro“, 16)
Pastoral Theology, by Rev. William Stang (New York, Cincinnati, Chicago: Benziger Brothers, 1897). With Imprimatur. Available in pdf, epub, kindle/mobi, and other formats at Internet Archive, in pdf format at University of Toronto Libraries, at Google Books, and (with some pages accessible to members) at Forgotten Books.
Feast of St. John of Sahagun in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.
The Spirit of Catholicism is a work of high theology written for a lay audience, eschewing technical terms for lucid and often beautifully poetic language. It is widely acknowledged to be one of the best introductions to Catholic Christianity available today; even George Orwell, non-believing but fair-minded (unlike many nowadays, alas), praised it in his own snarky way. Thus, it comes highly recommended by leading lay evangelists like Scott Hahn, a convert from Protestantism, and Dave Armstrong, who describes it as “perhaps the best book written about the Catholic Church in the 20th century. Must reading for Catholic and non-Catholic alike”.
In The Spirit of Catholicism, Karl Adam presents a panoramic view of the Catholic Faith from the perspective of the Incarnation, the revelation that God the Son became man in Jesus Christ for humanity’s salvation. The Incarnation shows that, even as salvation is entirely a Divine act, it is carried out through human freedom and cooperation: God the Son saved man by living and dying as a man; He shares this salvation with humanity through a community of human beings, the Church; and He supernaturally joins individuals to Himself through means appropriate to our spiritual and material life, which are called sacraments. In Chapter VII, Adam writes:
“The Catholic cannot think of the good God without thinking at the same time of the Word made Flesh, and of all His members who are united to Him by faith and love in a real unity. The God of Catholicism is the transcendent, absolute God, who became Man for us in His Son, and therefore no solitary God, but the God of angels and saints, the God of fruitfulness and abundance, the God who with a veritable divine folly by the incomprehensible decree of His most free Will takes up into Himself the whole creation that culminates in human nature, and in a new, unheard of supernatural manner, “lives in it,” “moves” in it, and in it “is” (cf. Acts XVii, 28).”
Adam shows the essence of salvation to be communion, a share in the supernatural life of Christ that is given to us through the Church, “which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:22-23), which baptizes us into the body of Christ (1 Corintians 12:12-13) and shares with us His life through sacraments like the Eucharist (John 6:52). Nor is salvation a solitary relationship between God and the individual; rather, it is the Christian’s adoption into a family of love, among fellow-children of the Father who, being in the body of Christ, share in His Sonship. Adam writes in Chapter VIII:
“As our Lord, in the great prayer which He taught His disciples, joined all who pray into a single unity and directed them to appeal out of this unity to their common Father, and as St. Paul especially enjoined prayer for one another (Rom. xv, 30; 2 Cor. i, 11; Eph. i, 15, etc.), so the Church prays, not in the name of any individual, nor as the mere sum of all individuals, but as a fellowship, as a priestly unity, as the visible priesthood of Christ.
“It is not I and you that pray, but the mystical Christ…”
This emphasis on the role of the Church as the whole Christ would become the ecclesiology of the encyclical Mysticum Corpus Christi (1943). Although it was downplayed after the “people of God” imagery of the 1960s returned the emphasis to the juridical, rather than the mystical, nature of the Church, Adam’s ecclesiology remains influential; and we ourselves think that it helped pave the way for the rise of modern covenant ecclesiology and for Pope Benedict XVI’s emphasis on communion as the nature of the Church.
“These things Jesus spoke, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said; Father, the hour is come, glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee… I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou hast given me out of the world. Thine they were, and to me thou gavest them: and they have kept thy word… Sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world… And not for them only do I pray, but for those also who through their word shall believe in me.
“That they all may be one, as thou, Father, in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me: And the glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them: that they may be one, as we also are one. I in them, and thou in me: that they may be made perfect in one: and the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast also loved me.” (St. John xvii, 1, 6, 17-18, 20-23)
Special Devotion to the Holy Ghost: A Manual for the use of Seminarians, Priests, Religious and the Christian People, by the Very Rev. [Bishop] Dr. Otto Zardetti, with a letter of introduction by the Very Rev. John Keane, D.D., Bishop of Richmond (Milwaukee: Hoffman Brothers, 1888). With Imprimatur. Available at Google Books and Hathitrust Digital Library. May be read online, and available in pdf, epub, mobi, and other formats at Internet Archive and Open Library, with a 2nd copy at Internet Archive and Open Library.
N.B., The discussion under Part III. The Office of the Holy Ghost, on pages 187 to 357, provides a concise yet comprehensive overview of Catholic Christian teaching on the Person of the God the Holy Spirit and His mission from creation to the eschaton.
On the Solemnity of Pentecost (Whitsunday), 2018.
“I have yet many things to say to you: but you cannot bear them now. But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will teach you all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but what things soever he shall hear, he shall speak: and the things that are to come, he will shew you. He shall glorify me: because he shall receive of mine, and will declare it to you. All things whatsoever the Father hath are mine. Therefore, I said, that he shall receive of mine, and will shew it to you.” (St. John xvi, 12-15)
