Links to Church
documents, and places where you can search for particular
writings. There is a whole lot of stuff that I will add to this
list as time permits. I'll probably sort out the ordering of
things as well. But I think there's enough here to start
with.
The Church, with
her 2000 years of saints and scholars, has a huge legacy of
Christian tradition, writings, studies and devotional material.
Here I have linked to some of this treasure.
The Bible
(The New Testament is of course one of the
earliest collections of Catholic writings.
:-)
- I recommend the Revised Standard Version: Catholic Edition (RSV:CE). I don't know that it
is online yet, but the normal RSV
is (it's not much different, although it groups the 'Deuterocanonicals'
(Baruch, Sirach, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Tobit, Judith, and the Wisdom of Solomon, plus portions of Esther and Daniel)
in with the 'Apocrypha', as is standard Protestant practice, but at least they are there. For a useful
discussion on Bible translations, see Choosing a
Bible Translation, by Catholic Answers' James
Akin.
- Another Bible
version I use a bit is theNRSV, but I don't
much like some of the inclusive-language
terms it uses which occasionally affect the meaning of the
text.
- Bible Study Tools at
Crosswalk.com - Lots of good study tools,
although everything here is from a Protestant
perspective.
- Bible Gateway -
Search the Bible in multiple versions.
- The King James
Bible - Zipped version downloadable from
EWTN, about 1.3MB.
- The Douay-Rheims Version
of the Bible (kind of the Catholic equivalent of the KJV).
Major Catholic Documents
Early Church Fathers and some Writings of the Saints
- Early Church Fathers -
(Christian Classics Ethereal Library).
This is a HUGE site, containing a large number of
early Church writings, in chronological order. From Clement of Rome to
Gregory the Great, with a whole lot in between, including the Didache, Justin
Martyr, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, Augustine,
Chrysostom, Eusebius, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, Jerome, Cyril
of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzen, Hilary of Poitiers, John
Damascene, Ambrose, and the texts of the seven great ecumenical
councils. If you want to get a feel for what the early Church
was like, this is a good place to start.
- The Fathers of the Church
(New Advent)
Similar to the above, except this time the writings are
in alphabetical order.
Some Saints
All of the stuff in this section is from the Christian
Classics Ethereal Library.
St Thomas Aquinas
St Augustine
St John of the Cross
St Catherine of Siena
St Theresa of Avila
St Francis de Sales
St Ignatius of Loyola
St Patrick
Other Writers
All the files linked to below are in the public domain.