Editions & Translations

Each guide below answers one question: which edition or translation of a Catholic classic to read. Guides list the recommended translations, free editions, and print copies, with a short note on why each pick is recommended.

• The Holy Bible
• Catechism of the Catholic Church
• The Didache & the Apostolic Fathers
• Confessions
• The City of God
• Summa Theologiae
• The Rule of St. Benedict
• The Imitation of Christ
• Introduction to the Devout Life
• Story of a Soul
• Dark Night of the Soul & Ascent of Mount Carmel
• The Interior Castle
• The Spiritual Exercises
• The Spiritual Combat
• True Devotion to Mary
• Diary: Divine Mercy in My Soul
• Revelations of Divine Love
• The Cloud of Unknowing
• Abandonment to Divine Providence
• The Practice of the Presence of God
• The Little Flowers of St. Francis
• Pensées
• Apologia Pro Vita Sua
• An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent
• An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine
• The Idea of a University
• Orthodoxy
• The Everlasting Man
• The Father Brown Stories
• The Man Who Was Thursday
• St. Thomas Aquinas (“The Dumb Ox”) & St. Francis of Assisi
• The Path to Rome & Europe and the Faith
• The Divine Comedy
• Brideshead Revisited
• More Waugh: Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, A Handful of Dust, Scoop, Sword of Honour, Edmund Campion, Helena
• The Lord of the Rings
• Flannery O’Connor: Stories, Novels, and Letters
• Kristin Lavransdatter
• The Diary of a Country Priest
• The Betrothed (I promessi sposi)
• Lord of the World
• The Power and the Glory & The End of the Affair
• The Moviegoer
• Death Comes for the Archbishop
• Quo Vadis
• Poems
• Father Elijah
• Introduction to Christianity
• The Spirit of the Liturgy
• Jesus of Nazareth
• Theology and Sanity
• Leisure: The Basis of Culture
• Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide
• The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy
• Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith
• Catholic Christianity
• Handbook of Catholic Apologetics
• Rome Sweet Home
• Catholicism and Fundamentalism
• The Fathers Know Best
• The Lamb’s Supper
• Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist
• Life of Christ & Three to Get Married
• The Seven Storey Mountain
• The Long Loneliness
• Butler’s Lives of the Saints
• The Stripping of the Altars
• Religion and the Rise of Western Culture
• The Founding of Christendom (History of Christendom vol. 1)