Saturday, January 24, 2015

Resources on Roman Catholicism

When Pope Francis was elected pope in 2013, I witnessed a lot of fellow Latter-day Saints praising the new pope and wishing God’s blessings upon his and his pontificate on facebook and other venues (even if his first act as pope was idolatrous [a prayer to Mary]); furthermore, in light of the recent meetings between LDS and Catholic leaders addressing moral issues, I have no doubt that many within the Church will hope for theological, not just moral, ecumenism in the near future. For those of us who have studied Rome’s history and theology, however, this is polar opposite of what any Latter-day Saint should hope for—what Rome teaches as dogma about issues such as the papacy, Mary, the Mass, veneration of images, etc., falls under the anathema of Gal 1:6-9. This stance may make me unpopular, but so be it.

For those wishing to study the real issues about Roman Catholicism, I would recommend the following (broken down into [1] sources and [2] works refuting, biblically and/or historically, Catholic dogmas on central issues—Mary, the Papacy, the Mass, and the early Councils); at the end, I have included some Catholic apologetic and scholarly works on various issues, too:

Heinrich Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma

Ludwig Ott, The Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma

Jacques Dupuis, The Christian Faith

Catechism of the Council of Trent (AKA The Roman Catechism)

1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church

1983 Code of Canon Law

Documents of Vatican II (1962-1965)

Karl Josef von Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church (5 vols.)

Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism

The Harper-Collins Encyclopedia of  Catholicism, ed. Richard P. McBrien

Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church (8 vols.)

Idem. Creeds of Christendom (3 vols.)

Eric Svendsen, Who is My Mother? The Role and Status of the Mother of Jesus in the New Testament and Roman Catholicism

Stephen J. Shoemaker, The Ancient Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition and Assumption

J.E. Merdinger, Rome and the African Church in the Time of Augustine

William Webster, The Matthew 16 Controversy: Peter and the Rock

Edward Denny, Papalism

Michael Whelton, The Two Paths

Michael Tierney, The Origins of Papal Infallibility, 1150-1350: A Study on the Concepts of Infallibility, Sovereignty, and Tradition in the Middle Ages

George Salmon, Infallibility and the Church

Ignatius Von Döllinger, The Pope and the Council

J.N.D. Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes

Laurent A. Cleenewerck, His Broken Body: Understanding and Healing the Schism between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches

John F. Bigane, III, Faith, Christ or Peter: Matthew 16:18 in Sixteenth Century Roman Catholic Exegesis

Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist in the Church in the Middle Ages

Edward J. Kilmartin, The Eucharist in the West: History and Theology

John Philip Jenkins, Jesus Wars

Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory

Ramsay MacMullen, Voting about God in Early Church Councils


Pro-Catholic Apologetic Works


Robert A. Sungenis, Not by Faith Alone: The Biblical Evidence for the Catholic Doctrine of Justification

Idem. Not By Bread Alone: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for the Eucharistic Sacrifice

Not by Scripture Alone: A Catholic Critique of the Protestant Doctrine of Sola Scriptura ed. Robert A. Sungenis

B.C. Butler, The Church and Infallibility

Scott Butler et al. Jesus, Peter, and the Keys

Steve Ray, Upon This Rock

Idem. Crossing the Tiber

Karl Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism

Patrick Madrid, Pope Fiction

Idem. Any Friend of God is a Friend of Mine

Scott Hahn, Kinship by Covenant

James T. O'Connor, The Hidden Manna

Dave Armstrong, A Biblical Defense of Catholicism

Idem. The Catholic Verses

Idem. Pillars of Sola Scriptura

John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine

Idem. Lectures on Justification

Yves Congar, Tradition and Traditions

George Agius, Tradition and the Church


Tim Staples, Behold your Mother

John McHugh, The Mother of Jesus in the New Testament

Martin Sheehan, Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

Mark Shea, By What Authority?

Trent Horn, The Case for Catholicism: Answers to Classic and Contemporary Protestant Objections