Parish Library

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OAKIE

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My parish has a library, but most of the books were collected by our “Spirit of Vatican II” DRE who has stocked us up with plenty of Joan Chittister, Richard McBrien, and Roger Karban. I do not wish to throw these books out, but I think it would be a good thing to add some books like some Fr. Corapi, Fr. Groeschel or Dr. Scott Hahn. Since I can not afford to do this by myself I thought if I could develop a list of 10 or 15 good books that no Catholic parish library should be without maybe I could get some like minded families to kick in for this project. I think this is my Lenten project. My question to this group is what books should I add to the list?

Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut.

OAKIE
 
Sounds like you have the makings of a used book sale, the proceeds of which can be turned into the kind of books you would like to have available.
 
Look for used and new books on amazon, half.com or ebay. You can probably get a lot of them for less than $10.

Here’s some suggestions:

**Catholicism for Dummies **
amazon.com/Catholicism-Dummies-John-Trigilio/dp/0764553917

Catechism of the Catholic Church
amazon.com/Catechism-Catholic-Church-U-S/dp/0385479670

Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust
amazon.com/Left-Tell-Discovering-Rwandan-Holocaust/dp/1401908977/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235545616&sr=1-1

Eucharistic Miracles and Eucharistic Phenomena in the Lives of the Saints
amazon.com/gp/product/0895553031?ie=UTF8&redirect=true

Lives of the Saints
search.a1books.com/cgi-bin/mktSearch?act=showDesc&code=gbase&rel=1&ITEM_CODE=0895555301
google.com/products/catalog?q=lives+of+the+saints&hl=en&cid=2127091023982024587&sa=title#ps-sellers

**The Incorruptibles: A Study of the Incorruption of the Bodies of Various Catholic Saints and Beati **
amazon.com/gp/product/0895550660

The Grunt Padre
cmjbooks.com/plugins/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=CMPAD&Product_Code=033-soft&Category_Code=priests

Diary: Divine Mercy in My Soul
google.com/products/catalog?q=divine+mercy+in+my+soul&hl=en&cid=1062995994997495161&sa=title#ps-sellers

**Blessed Miguel Pro: 20th Century Mexican Martyr **
amazon.com/gp/product/0895555425

**Saved in Hope: Spe Salvi **
amazon.com/Saved-Hope-Pope-Benedict-XVI/dp/1586172514/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235545711&sr=1-1

God Is Love: Deus Caritas Est
amazon.com/God-Love-Deus-Caritas-Est/dp/1586171631/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

Purgatory - Explained by the Lives and Legends of the Saints
google.com/products/catalog?q=purgatory+TAN&hl=en&cid=1822676187529279968&sa=title#ps-sellers
 
First off, no need to bash the Second Vatican Council. Be charitable.

Second off, I would stock the library up with the writings of the Church Fathers, Catholic Bible translations, Church documents, and devotional books.

Get your pastor’s approval before changing books around in the library, too.
 
You might want to have a copy of The Documents of Vatican II available.
 
OAKIE said:
My parish has a library, but most of the books were collected by our “Spirit of Vatican II” DRE who has stocked us up with plenty of Joan Chittister, Richard McBrien, and Roger Karban. I do not wish to throw these books out, but I think it would be a good thing to add some books like some Fr. Corapi, Fr. Groeschel or Dr. Scott Hahn. Since I can not afford to do this by myself I thought if I could develop a list of 10 or 15 good books that no Catholic parish library should be without maybe I could get some like minded families to kick in for this project. I think this is my Lenten project. My question to this group is what books should I add to the list?

Thank you for your (name removed by moderator)ut.

OAKIE
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You can ask some parish organizations to help fund the library or you can work out a deal with publishers to act as a small dealer for them buying at a discount usually 40-50%. doing this allows you to sell one at full retail price and place the other in the library paid for by the sale of the other one. Buying used books is also a good source. I used to check out used book stores as I traveled to different cities and would have $100 available to purchase books when I found them.
 
I would love to see Bibles of different translations…NAB, Doughy Rheims, New Jerusalem Bible, etc. It would be nice to be able to be able to compare the same passage among different translations.

Also, I suggest the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Compendium of the CCC, and the old Baltimore Catechism. If you permit your library to contain CDs too, I highly recommend Fr. Corapi’s “The Teachings of Jesus Christ.” It’s his series of talks on CD that follow the CCC and explain the teachings of the Church.

You might also want to look into Lighthouse Media CDs, which contain talks by Catholic clergy, theologians, and lay speakers.
lighthousecatholicmedia.com/kiosk/

Also, from the viewpoint of trying to catechize the adults, I would like to see the CCD textbooks from each grade, most importantly the older grades.

For converts, Rome Sweet Home by Scott Hahn is a must. Catholicism for Dummies is another must.

I would try to carry books to appeal to a wide range of parishoners: the devout, the convert, teens, children, and those just wanting to learn more.
 
I don’t think the poster was trying to bash Vatican II, they said the “spirit of Vatican II” which unfortunately often misrepresents Vatican II. The Vatican II documents should be read and available, often reading them honestly will refute and show how far we have strayed in many ways from what Vatican II actually said.
You can get Vatican II documents from Amazon for about 5 bucks right here

I would go to Half.com or Amazon. you could get plenty of books for cheap used and stock up the library with some good Catholics books instead of those crummy ones you just mentioned.

God Bless
Scylla
 
Eucharisted said:
First off, no need to bash the Second Vatican Council. Be charitable.
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I have no intention of bashing the Second Vatican Council, but I am highly critical of those who use the Council to justify doing whatever abuse they propose and then claim that Vatican II empowered them to do so. Hence the term “Spirit of Vatican II”, because they must have been drinking when they came up with these ideas.
 
OAKIE said:
My parish has a library, but most of the books were collected by our “Spirit of Vatican II” DRE who has stocked us up with plenty of Joan Chittister, Richard McBrien, and Roger Karban. I do not wish to throw these books out,OAKIE
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You’re right - they shouldn’t be thrown out. They should be torn up and destroyed. Books by such authors have no place in a Catholic library.
 
Here are my favorites:

Spirit of the Liturgy - Pope Benedict XVI
A New Song for the Lord - Pope Benedict XVI
Feast of Faith - Pope Benedict XVI
The Lamb’s Supper - Scott Hahn, PhD
Death on a Friday Afternoon - +Fr. Richard John Neuhaus
Render Unto Caesar - Archbishop Chaput
God is Near - Pope Benedict XVI
The Liturgical Question Box - Bishop Peter Elliot

You can find all of these at www.amazon.com
 
Joan_M said:
You’re right - they shouldn’t be thrown out. They should be torn up and destroyed. Books by such authors have no place in a Catholic library.
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It is important to remember that these books are not my property, so I would not be free to sell them, or to tear them up, or to dispose of them in any way, even if I was tempted to do so. I would also expect others who might disagree with the orthodox books to be donated by this project to respect the property we have donated to the parish.
 
OAKIE said:
It is important to remember that these books are not my property, so I would not be free to sell them, or to tear them up, or to dispose of them in any way, even if I was tempted to do so. I would also expect others who might disagree with the orthodox books to be donated by this project to respect the property we have donated to the parish.
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The pastor needs to decide what authors are permitted in your library. If he decides to remove these books, they should be thrown away, not given or sold to someone who might be led astray.
 
Oakie, a friend and I embarked on a library-organizing project at my former parish. We found a lot of really bizarre books too…lots of New Age stuff, “centering prayer” and the like. We set them aside for our priest to look at, but I don’t know if he ever did go through them.

Just posting to say I completely understand your plight! You’ve gotten some good suggestions. www.half.com is a good place to find gently used books at low prices.
 
mystified said:
Sounds like you have the makings of a used book sale, the proceeds of which can be turned into the kind of books you would like to have available.
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I think that if you consider certain books to be unfit for consumption by others it would be immoral to try and sell them. Just think about it; if you don’t want the books in the library because you think reading them would harm your soul, should you sell them into someone else’s hands, someone less knowledgeable about the harms it could pose? How callous. Even if the buyer never reads it in her lifetime, they’ll just end up in another parish library in the future.

Better to gain legal possession of the books and dispose of them.
 
This is an excellent thread! I’ve recently reacquainted myself with my parish library and some of the covers of the yellowing books in there concerned me. I picked up a couple of covers that concerned me and found that they’d never been checked out anyway.

I’m developing a plan to offer to run my parish library. Once the parish library gets on the right track, I’d probably step down. I have a friend who is youth minister at my parish and I might get some intel from him before proceeding.

For all I know, every troublesome title in there was donated by the pastor. If that is so, I’d better be extra diplomatic.

I find that whenever you make a good suggestion at your parish, don’t expect them to turn it down. Expect them to ask you to execute your plan. Once or twice in the past a pastoral team has surprised me by responding to my emailed suggestions by asking to meet with me to develop a plan to execute the proposal! Unfortunately I was too busy (truth) and nothing came of it.

So if you want something to change, you MUST give an idea for replacing what you want to remove.
 
Joan_M said:
You’re right - they shouldn’t be thrown out. They should be torn up and destroyed. Books by such authors have no place in a Catholic library.
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Exactly! Books which lead one from the Church do not belong in a parish library and I would hope the pastor of the parish would agree. If he doesn’t you have bigger problems than some books in the library. To those of you who don’t understand this, the point is that these books teach the failed dissident thoughts of the past 40 years. They highlight cafeteria Catholicism…
 
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