Saint Cajetan lived in Rome in the early 1500s. He went to Venice and then returned to Rome to found the order of the Theatines.

Saint Teresa of Avila wrote many letters, which are collected here. Her correspondence was most extensive, including bishops, archbishops, kings, ladies of rank, gentlemen of the world, abbots, priors, nuncios, her confessors, her brothers and sisters, rectors of colleges, fathers provincial of the Society of Jesus, nuns and superiors of her convents and monasteries, learned doctors of different religious orders, and even most eminent saints, such as .St. Peter of Alcantara, St. Francis Borgia, St. John of the Cross, &c. In the Letters of St. Teresa it seems to me that all her admirable endowments, both of nature and of grace, can be more clearly discovered than in any of her other works. When we peruse her Life, or The Interior Castle, one is at first inclined to imagine that the Saint was altogether unearthly, unfit for the cares and troubles of life that all her time must have been spent in holding sweet converse with her Beloved, and sighing for the hour when she should be united with Him for ever, and that visions and raptures must have engrossed all the powers of her soul. Others, again, might fancy that the Saint must have been very grave, austere, solemn, exceedingly scrupulous, and given to melancholy. Some might also be inclined to believe that she was quite an enthusiast, led away by the ardent temperament of her character, or the vagaries of an unsteady imagination. But how quickly are such erroneous ideas scattered, when we read her admirable Letters. They soon convince us that the Saint possessed what we call common sense" in a most remarkable manner that so fur from being an enthusiast, she was endowed with a solidity of judgment, and a prudence and sweetness in all her actions, which won the admiration of everyone; that she was so careful to guard against melancholy, as never to allow any one to enter the Order who seemed to be the least infected with it. With regard to herself, we shall see, by perusing her Letters, that she was cheerfulness itself, even in the midst of her greatest trials and afflictions, and withal exceedingly witty, lively, and jocose; indeed, her naivetr is one of the greatest charms of her Letters. These will show us, too, that her raptures and visions did not, in the least, interfere with her ordinary duties, for she was an excellent and most admirable woman of business. Considering her numerous labours, duties, journeys, sicknesses, and infirmities, is it not surprising how she could find time to carry on such an extensive correspondence? Juan de Palafox, the celebrated bishop of Osma, remarks, "that it was principally by her Letters the Saint was enabled to effect the reform of the Carmelite Order."

This book is a translation, the only one from the Latin, of the Preces Gertrudianae, a manual of devotions compiled in the seventeenth century from the Suggestions of Divine Piety of St. Gertrude and St. Mechtilde, nllns of the Order of St. Benedict. Of this work Alban Butler says, in his life of St. Gertrude, that it is perhaps the most useful production, next to the writings of St. Teresa, with which any female saint ever enriched the Church. Care has been taken to preserve, not only the substance, but, as far as might be, the form, of the original prayers; and a few others, well known and much valued, have been added as an Appendix. Let us consider this advice: When you are distracted in prayer, commend it to the Heart of Jesus, to be perfected by him, as our Lord Himself taught St. Gertrude. One day, when she was nluch distracted in prayer, he appeared to her, and held forth to her his Heart with his own sacred hands, saying: Behold, I set My Heart before the eyes of thy soul, that thou mayest commend to it all thine actions, confidently trusting that all that thou canst not of thyself supply to them will be therein supplied, so that they may appear perfect and spotless in my sight. Remember always to say the Gloria Patri with great devotion. The hermit Honorius relates that a certain monk who had been accustomed to say his office negligently appeared to another after his death and being asked what sufferings he had to undergo in punishment of his carelessness, he said that all had been satisfied for and effaced by the reverent devotion with which he had always said the Gloria Patri.

Part of the Sabbatine Privilege is for those who can read to recite daily the Little Office of Our Lady. And yet, this recitation can be dry as dust without a proper understanding of these holy prayers. Although this book has been written primarily for the use of religious, I have borne in mind the wants of that everincreasing number of the laity who prefer to find their devotion in the Church's prayers, where all is staid and sober and short, rather than in the utterances of private individuals, which are often the reverse. In days gone by the Little Office in English was the favourite devotion of our Catholic forefathers. Happy for England when our prayers once more take such forms, and we build our spiritual life on the simple direct spirit of Holy Mother Church, instead of 011 those so-called devotions which the late saintly Cardinal Manning was wont to count as some of the greatest evils of the Church to-day. As to the book itself. I have divided the treatise into three parts: - In the THEORETICAL part, I inquire into the nature and excellence of Liturgical Prayer; and then discuss the materials which compose the Little Office; lastly, I give an historical account of the growth and development of the Prayer as we have it to-day. In the PRACTICAL part, I consider the best means of saying the Office with fruit and according to the mind of the Church, and I also make various suggestions to this end, and treat of some difficulties. The EXEGETICAL part consists of a full and complete Commentary, drawn from the Fathers and great mystical writers, on every verse of the Psalms, together with a full explanation of the hymns, lessons, responsories, antiphons, versicles, and prayers. To this is added by way of Appendix a Ceremonial and the latest decrees of the Sacred Congregation of Rites upon the subject. As to the use to be made of this book. It is not intended to be read through once and then laid aside, as a mere book of reference. But, as the Office is a daily work, so should this treatise be made a daily handbook for reading and studying now one part, and then another. I recommend that first of all the book be read through, in order to grasp the general subject. Then that portions of the Third Part be studied daily. On retreat days, the First and Second Parts may be read with advantage. Again, a verse of a Psalm with its commentary may be usefully taken as the subject of mental prayer, and the lights which are gained during the recitation will prove abundant food for this time. And for spiritual reading, slow and thoughtful, what can be better than a commentary on the Psalms; for here we have the Holy Ghost speaking to us directly in the words of the Scripture i and His saints explaining them to us. The main point I want to arrive at with those who use this book is the value of the Public Prayer above all private prayer, and the consequent necessity of making a deliberate study thereof.

The Fathers of the Council of Trent showed at a very early date that they were satisfied with none of the existing works, and that they were fully alive to the need and necessity of preparing an authoritative Catechism. The realisation of their desire, however, was retarded for several years by events over which they had little control; and when the work was finally taken in hand another idea prevailed, resulting in the publication of a manual for the use of the clergy, and not, as originally suggested, a Catechism for children and uninstructed adults. Of the countless Catechisms that continued to appear, two - those of Bellarmine and Canisius - have steadily held their ground ever since, and to a large extent have served as the models of nearly an subsequent compilations of the kind. The influence of Canisius, however, has on the whole been limited to Germany; whereas Bellarmine's Catechism, which was written by command of Pope Clement VIII in 1597, has been copied in almost every other country in the world. At an early date it was translated into Arabic, Latin, Modern Greek, French, Spanish, German, English, and Polish. It had the warm approbation of Clement VIII, who prescribed it for use in the Papal States; of Urban VIII, who directed it to be adopted in all the Eastern missions; of Innocent XIII and Benedict XIV; particularly of the very important Council of all Italy, held at Rome, in 1725, which made it obligatory in all the dioceses of the peninsula; and finally of the Vatican Council which indicated it as the model for a proposed universal Catechism. Though Bellarmine's Catechism was largely followed as a model all over the world, yet, owing to the modifications introduced in diocesan editions, it came to pass in the course of time that almost every diocese had its own Catechism, differing in many respects from the Catechisms of other dioceses. The obvious inconvenience of this bewildering multiplicity of Catechisms occupied the attention of the Fathers of the Vatican Council, the great majority of whom were agreed as to the desirability of having a uniform small Catechism for the faithful all over the world. Early during the sittings of the Council, forty-one of the assembled Fathers devoted six sessions (February 10 to February 22) to an examination of the question; and the report which they drew up occupied the attention of the whole Council during the sittings of April 29 and 30. The question being put to a vote on May 4, an immense majority was found to be in favour of the compilation of a small uniform Catechism, to be compiled in Latin, translated into every language, and made obligatory in every diocese. But the approach of the Italian troops towards the walls of Rome brought the Council to an untimely end and there was no time to promulgate the constitution on the proposed uniform Catechism, so that it has not the force of law. The idea, however, has never been lost sight of. During the sitting of the first Catechetical Congress in 1880, the then Bishop of Mantua (later St. Pius X) proposed that the Holy Father be petitioned to arrange for the compilation of a simple, plain, brief, and popular Catechism for uniform use all over the world. Shortly after his elevation to the Chair of Peter, Pius X at once set about realising, within certain limits, his own proposal of 1880, by prescribing a uniform Catechism - the Compendium of Christian Doctrine - for use in the dioceses of the ecclesiastical province of Rome, at the same time indicating that it was his earnest desire to have the same manual adopted all over Italy. The text selected was, with slight modifications, that which had been adopted for some years by the united hierarchy of Piedmont, Liguria, Lombardy, Emilia, and Tuscany.

The original title of this book, which was compiled from a series of lectures delivered in Edinburgh in October, 1884 by Mgr. Dillon, was The War of Antichrist with the Church and Christian Civilization. The author wrote it "in order to do his part in carrying out the instruction given by the Sovereign Pontiff in the Encyclical Humanum Genus when he called upon the pastors of souls, to whom it was addressed, to 'instruct the people as to the artifices used by societies of this kind in seducing men and enticing them into their ranks, and as to the depravity of their opinions and the wickedness of their acts'. Mgr. Dillon's work has already been honoured by the Holy Father himself with so marked and so unusual an approbation that there is no need for us to accord it any further praise than merely to take note of the fact. The book was presented to His Holiness, accompanied by an Italian version of its table of contents, and of long extracts from its principal sections, and Leo XIII was pleased to order that the Italian version should be completed, and the book printed and published at Rome at his own expense." (The Month, Sept. 1885). Despite the fact that the lectures were delivered by a Catholic prelate to an audience composed mainly of members of his own faith, we feel that the subject of international political skullduggery is one which cannot fail to interest Catholic and non-Catholic alike, the more so indeed since events in the course of the decades following the original publication of this book have confirmed the lecturer's thesis. The last four editions have appeared under the title of Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked. Mgr. Dillon does not speak explicitly of the two currents of thought and action proceeding from the Masonic French Revolution, namely, the current of Rousseauist-LockianMasonic Liberalism and the current of Socialism and Communism. Implicitly, however, he does so when, on the one hand, he foreshadows the United States of Europe and World Federalism and, on the other, quotes the infamous Declaration of the International in 1868. This Declaration, formulated at the International Congress held at Geneva in 1868 and quoted by Mgr. Dillon in his preface, is well worth reproducing, at least in part. It runs as follows: "The object of the International Association of Workmen, as of every other Socialist Association, is to do away with the parasite and the pariah. Now what parasite can be compared to the priest. "God and Christ, these citizen-Providences, have been at all times the armour of Capital and the most sanguinary enemies of the working classes. It is owing to God and to Christ that we remain to this day in slavery. It is by deluding us with lying hopes that the priests have caused us to accept all the sufferings of this earth. It is only after sweeping away all religion, and after tearing up even to the last roots every religious idea that we can arrive at our political and social ideal. "Down, then, with God and with Christ Down with the despots of heaven and earth Death to the priests Such is the motto of our grand crusade." In a note on page 20 of the original edition Mgr. Dillon returned to the question of the direction of Freemasonry, which he had mentioned in his preface. He there says: "The Jewish connection with modern Freemasonry is an established fact everywhere manifested in its history. The Jewish formulas employed by Freemasonry, the Jewish traditions which run through its ceremonial, point to a Jewish origin, or to the work of Jewish contrivers .... Who knows but behind the Atheism and desire of gain which impels them to urge on Christians to persecute the Church and destroy it, there lies a hidden hope to reconstruct their Temple, and in the darkest depths of secret society plotting there lurks a deeper society still which looks to a return to the land of Judah and to the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem?"

'Read Me or Rue It' and 'How to Avoid Purgatory' are accompanied by several other useful instructions and several devotions for the Poor Souls in Purgatory. The devotions include the 'Novena for the Relief of the Poor Souls in Purgatory' and the 'Daily Pilgrimage to Purgatory. The Office of the Dead is included for use with the burial as well as for private devotion. 'How to Grieve for your Dead' is also included to help those who have lost a loved one.