Catholic publishers ranked from best to worst?

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How would you rank the following publishers? TAN books/St. Benedict Press, Ignatius Press, Baronius Press, Editions Du Serf, Franciscan Media, GIA Publications, Oregon Catholic Press, Saint Austin Press, Veritas Communications, Fatima Center, Our Lady of Victory School, Sophia Institute Press, Our Sunday Visitor.

I know about TAN books/St.Benedict Press, Ignatius Press, Fatima Center and Our Lady of Victory School. I don’t know enough about the others to comment.
 
I love Ignatius Press and Emmaus Road Publishing. Our Sunday Visitor is nice, too, as far as I know. I don’t have experience with the others.
 
I don’t really pay attention to catholic periodicals. I prefer historical and biographical information about saints.
 
I really like Ignatius Press and others are good as well. Also good sources elsewhere not book related like Lighthouse Catholic Media and Ascension Presents
 
That ranking is okay, except I really disagree with them bashing Paulist Press and St. Anthony Messenger publishing.

I have owned a copy of “Hope for the Flowers” since I was about 13 years old and have been unaware for 40 years there was anything “relativistic” about it. It’s a book about the dangers of materialism and worldly competition.

As for complaining that St. Anthony Messenger has a book on Black Elk, he’s a Servant of God on the path to sainthood, give me a break.
 
I mostly agree with the rankings by Aquinasandmore. As they point out, publishers like Paulist or St Anthony’s press occasionally have a solid book, but they aren’t reliably solid.

If I am not too familiar with author, I stay away from the bad publishers.

The imprimatur is not a guarantee of full orthodoxy but it’s minimum standard in Catholic books that is still useful.
 
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You neglected to add: Alba House which is the Society of St. Paul’s publishing house and
You also neglected to add: Pauline Books and Media which is the Daughter’s of St. Paul publishing house.
 
commenter said:
The imprimatur is not a guarantee of full orthodoxy
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I’ll have to let the bishop know that’s not what his imprimatur means. That will certainly come as a surprise to him.
 
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On the one hand, I agree with you that the imprimatur is supposed to mean that a book is “free from doctrinal and moral error”.

On the other hand, last year I ran across a whole rack of little pamphlets by “Anne, a Lay Apostle” that had imprimaturs by some bishop, which considering the controversial status of “Anne, a Lay Apostle” was just weird to me. The stuff in the books was a bit weird too in parts. I couldn’t say it contained “doctrinal or moral error” - for example, she has supposed revelations about purgatory that we can’t say are true or false because the Church doesn’t purport to know exactly and specifically exactly what activities go on in purgatory, only that people there are prepared for Heaven - but I am not sure why bishops would be putting an imprimatur on such conjectures either, unless the person was to the level of being possibly considered for sainthood, which to my knowledge “Anne” is not.
 
JulianN said:
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commenter:
The imprimatur is not a guarantee of full orthodoxy
Click to expand...
I’ll have to let the bishop know that’s not what his imprimatur means. That will certainly come as a surprise to him.
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An imprimatur means there is no specific paragraph that directly contradicts the Faith.
For example, religion texts have gotten imprimatur, that omitted almost all doctrinal content, simply because they didn’t have any heretical paragraph.

So yeah, the imprimatur is a needed minimum standard. If you are looking for a school for your child, you want it to pass fire safety inspection. But you would ask other questions too.

An imprimatur is not an endorsement!
 
It’s an indication the material is free from doctrinal error—how would it then not be ‘orthodox’?
 
Because it means that there is nothing that directly conflicts with the faith. But it also doesn’t mean that questionable theological theories might not be slipped in.

Remeber, they come from individual bishops and religious order heads.

So what a doctrinally liberal bishop might approve might be very different from a doctrinally conservative bishop.

So for example: let’s say the author is strongly arguing that hell might be empty. One bishop might ok it, while another might ask the author to remove that.

Finally, it also doesn’t mean that Bishop himself is actually endorsing the book.

God Bless
 
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JulianN said:
It’s an indication the material is free from doctrinal error—how would it then not be ‘orthodox’?
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Lots of junk foods pass the FDA test - no poisons.
That doesn’t mean they are nutritious, or that the good of eating them outweighs the bad. Maybe, maybe not.

Having said that, I repeat there is a value in looking for the imprimatur. For Catholic books, the failure to meet at least this minimum standard is a red flag.
 
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commenter said:
Having said that, I repeat there is a value in looking for the imprimatur. For Catholic books, the failure to meet at least this minimum standard is a red flag.
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I general I agree. However some books don’t really qualify for the imprimatur due to their topic. For example: many Catholic family life books or Catholic history book don’t really qualify for an imprimatur.

Also, generally, the author has to request The imprimatur from his/her own bishop.

Some very orthodox authors currently have a bishop they don’t see eye to eye with. So they might even ask their bishop for an imprimatur.

So I would not consider the imprimatur as a minimum requirement, but it surely plays a factor. For example: I’m going to consider anything from Ignatus Press or anything from Dr. Scott Hanh as ok (with or without the imprimatur)

God Bless
 
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Also left off Faith Publishers, a great resource for parishes.
 
I agree, Ignatius Press is well known as orthodox. For smaller, or unfamiliar to me publishers, I would ask if they are a ministry affiliated with the Church. Even this is not a total guarantee: St Anthony’s Messenger was approved decades ago. They know how far they can bend the standard, and still be approved. It’s an imperfect, but still useful standard.

But in general, it’s a good idea to check if a publisher has a relationship with their local ordinary.
 
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