Constantly, my friends tell me, “Abaccio, you should read this here book, you’d love it!” I always tell them, quite honestly, that I’ll add it to my list. Unfortunately, the list grows faster than I can read! As I was venturing through my theological library (now over 500 printed volumes, not including booklets), I realized that contained therein were some real treasures. I’m sure I’ll make a similar post in the not-too-distant future continuing on this thread, but, for the time being, some cool old books I recommend to all of you!
1.) The Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims Version (Challoner revision), 1914, 1400pp. I have a great multitude of Bibles, but this one is my favorite, by far. I picked it up at an estate sale a few years back for the low, low, price of one dollar, and it has served me quite well. It may take a wee bit to get used to, as certain books have different names than in modern translations, and the Psalms retain the “Catholic” numbering.
2.) Breviarium Romanum, 1928, 1200pp. This is such a neat little piece of history, though it is not exactly the easiest breviary to use. Why, you ask? The instructions, as well as the text, are in Latin! Once one figures it out, however, the beauty of the prayer is unsurpassed. I got this for fifty cents in a lot of books online.
3) Liber Usualis, 1934, 1900pp. The liber contains most versions of the ordinary chants of the Mass (Kyrie/Gloria/Credo/Sanctus/Benedictus/Agnus Dei, and Proper Chants for every commonly-celebrated liturgical feast. Furthermore, it contains ritual-specific and Divine Office chants. If you are a liturgical music aficionado, this is a spectacular resource. I splurged for my liber to the tune of $68. That’s still 50 dollars cheaper than currently available online, so I’ll consider it a steal!
4) Raccolta, 1929, 550pp. This is a really neat book that you almost never see anymore. From 1807 until it was replaced in 1967, it served as a collection of indulgenced prayers and good works, along with their specified indulgence. Again, this came in the same lot of books as my Breviarium. 50 cents!
5) The Faith of Our Fathers, 1876, 440pp. When a friend asked for my favorite book, I cited this one. This book was essentially directed at the conversion of Protestants, by explaining the basic tenets of the Faith, and why we hold them. I actually have a few copies of it, but this one is certainly my favorite. Why? The book sold millions of copies (as of 30 years ago, it was in its 111th printing), and printed on the title page of this one, is “the fortieth thousand.” I found this buried among decades of dust in my grandmother’s attic. free!
I mention these books specifically because just this evening, I came across the best “app” I have ever seen, entitled iPieta. For a mere $2.99, it includes:
1) The Douay-Rheims and Latin Vulgate Bibles: Available side-by-side
2) Liturgical Calendars (and daily readings), both Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms; both Latin and English.
3) Hundreds of Prayers, both in Latin and English, including the Divine Mercy Chaplet, the Extraordinary Form of Mass, the prayers for Benediction, the rosary (with mysteries), litanies, creeds, novenas, the way of the cross, a whole slew of confession resources and prayers, the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and hundreds of other prayers.
4) A veritable library of fantastic theological resources, including the following:
- Baltimore Catechisms and Catechism of Christian Doctrine
- Introduction to the Devout Life, by St. Francis De Sales
- The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas Kempis
- The works of St. Louis Marie de Montfort, St. Therese of the Child Jesus, and St Teresa of Jesus
- The works of St. John of the Cross, St John Vianney, and St Josemaria Escriva.
- The Catechetical Instructions of St. Thomas Aquinas
- The Roman Catechism (also knows as The Catechism of The Council of Trent or The Catechism of Pope St. Pius V)
- The Summa Theologica, by St. Thomas Aquinas
- Haydock’s Bibilical Commentary
- Catena Aurea (St. Thomas Aquinas’ collection of Church Fathers on the Gospels)
- Spiritual Exercises (St. Ignatius of Loyola)
- Every Papal Encyclical and Council Document
- The Lives of the Saints
- The Raccolta
- The Rule of St Benedict
- The works of St. Augustine, St John Chrysostom, and the Nicene and ante-Nicene Fathers
- The Faith of our Fathers, by Cardinal Gibbons, and much, much more!
Furthermore, for a mere 99 cents, one can acquire the app Breviarium Meum, which has side-by-side Latin-English for all 8 hours, as well as a treasury of prayers. Very easy to use!
Finally, for those who would love a Liber, but don’t have $100 lying around, the app Liber Pro is $14.99, and very easy to use.
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You ought to will your library to SBI for when they start over!!!! LOL LOL LOL
I have been using iPieta for almost a year now and am astonished I have not seen any accolades about it at all, until this post. Even Brandon Vogt has not mentioned it (to my knowledge), and he is about as techie / new media as they come. This is an absolutely fantastic app. Thank you. Abaccio, for drawing attention to it.
Thanks for sharing these resources, Abaccio. I started reading on my ipod several months back and I can’t believe how well it works. I downloaded the iPieta app you mentioned and fumbled through it this morning on my bus commute. I also downloaded Breviarium Meum, but forgot to download the content, so I couldn’t read it on the bus. There certainly is a lot of good stuff in there. One of the problems I see, though, is the mixing of reading software and content. Where I’d like to see it go is for the ebook world to settle on one or a few formats. This is happening now with .mobi and .epub. Then you can bring all your content into one reading app (like Kindle). Kindle is the best ebook app I’ve come across. The MAJOR downside is that it doesn’t support epub. However, I’m finding .mobi files to be almost as readily available. Anyways, that’s my 2 cents. I’m so very grateful how easily we have access to such great resources. Some people say that it’s so much harder to be a Christian in America today than it was 50 years ago. I’m not sure if that’s true, but one thing we can say… the tools we have available to us to keep us close by His side are unbelievable. The 2 sources of content I’ve found useful:
Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org
eg
Faith of our Fathers
and Calvin College’s Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel)
http://www.ccel.org
eg
Introduction to the Devout Life
I haven’t found a well indexed Bible. If anyone knows of one, let me know. I downloaded a free Douay-Rheims Version, but there’s no indexed TOC. IOW to find Psalm 51, you have to know that that’s about 53.86% of the way through the Bible.
What’s great about having one app to read your content is for highlighting, bookmarking, taking notes (and sharing), etc.
Now for the really geeky part… At various points in my life, I’ve attempted reading while exercising indoors. At one time I built this weird contraption that involved a large magnifying glass, a music stand, and a lot of rubber bands. It was silly and it didn’t really work. This past weekend, though, I FINALLY found a solution. Kindle for PC combined with audio software so I can just say “NEXT PAGE” and the page turns. The future is here! The only thing that could be better is learning Matrix style, “I know kung fu”
I spent a couple years working at Rush Rhees Library (at the University or Rochester). I believe SBI either donated or houses their books there. There’s also some sharing of content/space with Colgate, but I’m not sure of all the details. Anyways, the point is, Rush Rhees has an ENORMOUS amount of resources (books/journals/etc). It’s truly unbelievable. I mean they have shelves upon shelves of Jesuit writings on just a single topic.
I forgot to mention the other main reading app I use… instapaper. This app is great because it lets you read web content offline (without ads and other junk – text only). It works as a bookmarklet in your browser, so if you find something you want to read later, you simply click the bookmarklet in your browser and it’ll get downloaded to your mobile device. I think there’s another app called readability which does about the same thing. Anyway, it’s great for current news stories, but also for Church documents like papal encyclicals, council docs, etc. I hope eventually that kindle adds a feature like this, so I can bring all of my content together. You can also read personal docs in kindle. So if you have .doc or .pdf, you can email it to your kindle address and it’ll transform it into an ebook format for you.
and one more app – Magnificat. It’s kind of like Breviarium Meum lite. If you subscribe to the magazine – you get the app for free.
I’ve been flipping through Faith of our Fathers and found this particular passage fascinating:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27435/27435-h/27435-h.html#toc19
Apostolic Teaching
4. “Let women,” says the Apostle, “keep silence in the churches. For, it is not permitted them to speak … It is a shame for a woman to speak in the church.”87
Catholic Teaching
The Catholic Church never permits women to preach in the house of God.
Protestant Teaching
Women, especially in this country, publicly preach in Methodist and other churches with the sanction of the church elders.