The Catholic Encyclopedia (TCE) was published in 15 volumes between 1907 and 1912 by the Robert Appleton Company. In 1913 the publisher, renamed as Encyclopedia Press, Inc., released a new edition. A year later (1914) a comprehensive Index was released as Volume 16.
This Original Catholic Encyclopedia (OCE) site holds the complete 16 volume set with the original text of all articles (~11,500) faithfully preserved.
Catholic Answers began the process of creating an authoritative reproduction of this classic, world-renowned reference by scanning 14,000+ pages from the original volumes and processing the scans with OCR software. Issues that arose from the scanning/OCR process were addressed by a team of Catholic editors and technicians. All TCE content on this site was produced by Catholic Answers directly from the original volumes.
What's New - August 8, 2008
New Testament Click image to view errata
Much of the work here at the Original Catholic Encyclopedia site continues behind the scenes, but this week brings new features.
Errata
Available exclusively at the Original Catholic Encyclopedia, errata published by Encyclopedia Press, 1913 is available online. See New Testament for a nice example. Login to access this new feature.
If you are an existing member at CAF and are logged in there, you should automcatically be able to access this feature.
OCE Registration
If you are not already a member at CAF, it is now possible to register at OCE within a separate system. The cross-site registration has also been improved.
More quotes have been added to the Quotable Catholics side-column block.
Quotable Catholics features quotes from Catholics in every walk of life, including not only saints, martyrs, and popes, but also scientists, politicians, military men, clergy, kings, and more.
Incremental content improvements
More formatting and organizational improvements were added to dozens of complex articles.
Have comments or suggestions regarding this site? Please post them in the Catholic Encyclopedia forum. We welcome your feedback.
Visit us often as we are continually adding new features.
What's New - July 31, 2008
Our log-in process? Nope! The Polyglot Psalter, Genoa
Much of the work here at the Original Catholic Encyclopedia site continues behind the scenes.
Simply register at Catholic Answers Forums and your username will be automatically recognized here at the OCE site.
Quotable Catholics (side column block)
Many more quotes have been added to the Quotable Catholics side-column block.
Quotable Catholics features quotes from Catholics in every walk of life, including not only saints, martyrs, and popes, but also scientists, politicians, military men, clergy, kings, and more.
Incremental content improvements
Formatting and organizational improvements were added to dozens of complex articles.
Have comments or suggestions regarding this site? Please post them in the Catholic Encyclopedia forum. We welcome your feedback.
Additional major features are under development. Visit us often to see what is new.
What's New - June 27, 2008
Medieval History
Additional content and feature enhancements were made here at the Original Catholic Encyclopedia site.
Substantial work was done to provide a consistent user experience across all major browsers. ATTENTION IE USERS: be sure to check out the better access to search results and large article displays.
Have comments or suggestions regarding this site? Please post them in the Catholic Encyclopedia forum. We welcome your feedback.
Many more features are forthcoming in the weeks and months ahead. Stay tuned.
What's New - May 30, 2008
RSS2: Saints Feed
A shortened work week due to Memorial Day slowed things down a bit here at the Original Catholic Encyclopedia site.
Nevertheless, we have a few new features to announce.
A few more typos and syntax issues were found and fixed.
Have comments or suggestions regarding this site? Please post them in the Catholic Encyclopedia forum. We welcome your feedback.
More features will be forthcoming in the weeks and months ahead. Please visit often.
What's New - May 23, 2008
RSS: Saints Feed
Work on new features continues here at the Original Catholic Encyclopedia site.
A new class of OCE features is being made public today: RSS Feeds
RSS: Catholic Saints - Saints from the Original Catholic Encyclopedia; daily feed in XML format.
RSS: Popes - Popes from the Original Catholic Encyclopedia; daily feed in XML format.
We will be adding new topics and new feed implementations over the course of time.
More quotes have been added to the Quotable Catholics side column block.
We also posted additional errata data (for Volume 13 articles). Examples can be found in Revelation and Rights.
Work on improving content formatting and site useability is ongoing.
Have comments or suggestions regarding this site? Please post them in the Catholic Encyclopedia forum over at Catholic Answers Forums. We welcome your feedback.
We are planning many exciting features for this site, so check back often.
What's New - May 16, 2008
Curricula: Education
Work on new features continues here at the Original Catholic Encyclopedia site.
Our popular Curricula series was expanded again this past week:
Curricula: Education - A very nice survey of the Catholic Church's contributions towards education and training
Curricula: Philosophy - This new Curricula has absorbed earlier ones on Logic, Ethics, Metaphysics and Epistemology while expanding its coverage into all key areas of Philosophy
Curricula: Church History - This Curricula covers the first 300 years of the Church, up to the time of Constantine. We plan to expand coverage up to the 20th century; making it quite comprehensive when complete.
New quotes have been added to the Quotable Catholics side column block, as well.
Work on improving content formatting and site useability is ongoing.
Have comments or suggestions regarding this site? Please post them in the Catholic Encyclopedia forum over at Catholic Answers Forums. We welcome your feedback.
We are planning many exciting features for this site, so check back often.
What's New - May 9, 2008
Curricula: Christology
Efforts continue towards new features here at the Original Catholic Encyclopedia site.
Work remains largely "behind-the-scenes" in preparation for future enhancements.
For example, a number of administrative tools have been created that should accelerate our efforts;
and improvements in server and network configurations were made to speed web page delivery
Still, we had enough time to extend already available features:
At the request of a Catholic Answers Forums member, we have created a new Curricla (hyperlinked study outlines) on Christology:
Curricula: Christology - outlines all major developments regarding our understanding of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Also, a number of comments regarding our Errata framework have been received.
Based on these, improvements have been made with an eye towards making the framework simpler to use and understand by site visitors.
We also posted additional errata data (for Volume 14 articles).
If you want to see what it looks like, take a look at our articles on the Old Testament and Vermont (for example).
New quotes have been added to the Quotable Catholics side column block, as well.
Work on improving overall content quality and site useability is ongoing.
Have comments or suggestions regarding this site? Please post them in the Catholic Encyclopedia forum over at Catholic Answers Forums. We welcome your feedback.
As mentioned above, many exciting features are in the queue, so check back often.
What's New - May 2, 2008
Sacred Scripture
Work on new features here at the Original Catholic Encyclopedia site continues.
Much of the work continues to be "behind-the-scenes" in preparation for future feature enhancements.
Several new essential subjects have been added to our Curricla (hyperlinked study outlines):
The latter is especially broad in scope and pulls together hundreds of articles.
We have a framework running to incorporate the published Errata from the TCE.
We have all the errata data and have posted some (from Volume 15).
If you want to see what it looks like, take a look at Venice and Vermont (for example).
A new Quotable Catholics side column block has been added with quotes by Catholics (obviously) who are the subjects of articles (perhaps not so obvious) in the encyclopedia.
Work on improving overall content quality and site useability continues as well, including:
(a) article formatting cleanups (minor); (b) repairs of reported content issues (minor); (c) repair of a few title/subtitle issues (minor);
(d) user interface cleanups; and (e) structural reorganization of some large articles.
As suggested above, many exciting features are planned for release in the near future, so check back often.
What's New - April 25, 2008
Catholicism & Science
We continue to work on new features here at the Original Catholic Encyclopedia site,
although much of the work this past week was "behind-the-scenes" in preparation for features to be released in the future.
Nevertheless, a few new features are available for public release:
Two new essential subjects have been added to our Curricla (hyperlinked study outlines):
Curricula: Ethics - The science of the moral rectitude of human acts
Curricula: Science - System of knowledge which attempts to model objective reality
The latter is especially sweeping in scope and provides a good overview of the relationship between the Church and Science.
Work on improving overall content quality and site useability continues as well, including:
(a) article formatting cleanups (minor);
(b) repairs of reported content issues (minor);
(c) repair of a few title/subtitle issues (minor);
(d) user interface cleanups; and
(e) structural reorganization of some large articles.
As suggested above, many exciting features are planned for release in the near future, so check back often.
What's New - April 18, 2008
Index of 1,001 Saints
Work on new features here at OCE continues. This past week we focused on novel organization of the content found in this work as well as simplifying access:
Interested in exploring certain topics in more depth? We've created hyperlinked study outlines (curricla) for the following essential subjects:
A Site Status module has been added to the left column. This provides visitors with a snapshot of the content used to create the OCE site and its freshness.
A sidebar on Hagiography was added to the Index of 1,001 Saints to provide quick access to related topics on the lives of the saints, martyrologies, and the like.
Each article page has new links to its next door neighbors. These "next" and "previous" links not only simplify quick movement through sequential articles, they also provide an easy way to check nearby articles for similar content.
Additionally, these links have mouseover pop-up tips that provide a preview of the article. This provides a quick way to get a sense of that article's content without having to actually load the page.
More features will be forthcoming in the weeks and months ahead. Please visit often.
What's New - April 11, 2008
List of Popes
We are continuing to implement new features here at OCE.
This past week we focused on adding more access points to the content found in this work:
Inside the page flipper (where you are looking at page scans of the original work) additional links have been added:
The listing of Nearby Articles is expanded, providing up to a dozen nearby articles
A listing of any Nearby Maps has been added
A listing of Nearby Illustrations has been added
A list of Popes has been compiled from articles in the Original Catholic Encyclopedia.
It is not an article from the print version, but is provided here for the benefit of of Internet visitors.
The list is sortable by name (alpha) and by chronology.
A list of Saints has been compiled from articles in the Original Catholic Encyclopedia.
It is not an article from the print version, but is provided here for the benefit of of Internet visitors.
The list can be reverse sorted.
We also continue to work on improving overall content quality and site useability, including article formatting cleanups, repairs of all reported content issues, and repair of a few minor indexing issues.
Finally, in response to a few queries about the effort put into the OCE site, we've posted an explanation in the "Why OCE?" article.
Stay tuned as there will be more features forthcoming in the weeks and months ahead.
What's New - April 4, 2008
Map Room
We are continuing to implement new features here at OCE. This past week we focused on adding access points to the marvelous imagery found in The Catholic Encyclopedia:
Map Room - a gallery of the color maps from the original print volumes
Art Gallery - includes the full-page colorplates, photos, and illustrations
Scans Index - easy access to the page scans by individual volume
Plus we are continuing to work behind-the-scenes to improve overall content quality and site useability:
Article formatting cleanups
Improved browser compatibility
Updates to the alpha indicies and page flipper functionality
Content repairs on all reported issues
And there is still more in the works.
What's New - March 28, 2008
Scans by Volume
We've been very busy over the last few months. Many issues raised by our site reviewers have been addressed:
All known Catholic Encyclopedia structural issues related to indexing and titles have been straightened out.
Improved access to (and within) the Title Index.
Missing subtitles have been added.
Overly complex subtitles have been edited for size and clarity.
Known broken hyperlinks have been replaced and/or repaired.
Most reported spelling/hyphenation issues have been fixed.
A simplified "Problem Reporting" mechanism has been added (see below for more information).
Support for "e-mail this page" functionality has been added to every article page.
Support for IE 7 browsers is now complete.
In addition several new features have been implemented:
In addition to providing the text of every article as before, we have just uploaded 28,000+ scan images (full-size pages plus thumbnails) from the original volumes.
You can access every article as originally printed so you can be assured of the accuracy of our article text!
Every (text) article has an embedded thumbnail of the scan of the original printed page. It is linked to a full-sized page scan.
Every page scan has links back to the associated articles.
You can flip through the page scans just like reading a book.
All color plates and full-page illustrations are included in the page scans.
More new features are planned for the days and weeks ahead here at The Original Catholic Encyclopedia site. So stay tuned!
Reporting Problems - New
We need your help! This content is in Release Candidate Mode.
Many systemic errors arising from the OCR process have already been identified and corrected during internal and third-party review processes.
We now ask for your help in identifying any remaining problems. These problems fall broadly into two categories, spelling and punctuation. These probably manifest themselves as follows:
improper punctuation (e.g., unmatched quotes, apostrophe/comma and comma/period substitutions);
improperly numbered subsections (e.g., improper use of 1, l, and I);
missing or added spaces (e.g., "often" vs. "of ten");
improper word substitutions caused by poor character recognition (e.g., "meat" vs. "meet").
If you see a possible error while reading an article, we request that you:
Confirm that an error exists in the article text by clicking the scan thumbnail to view the actual scan image.
If you have found a real error, click the "Report translation problem" link at the bottom of the text article.
Note the location in the article of any problem (e.g., paste the word, phrase, sentence)
Note the type of problem (describe the issue you found, such as: spelling, punctuation, hyphen).
List the fix (provide the accurate spelling, punctuation, hyphenation).
NOTE:The Catholic Encyclopedia represents a snapshot of Catholic knowledge at the beginning of the 20th century. As such, the content found here is not intended to reflect subsequent doctrinal developments (e.g., Vatican II) and changes in discipline (e.g., Friday abstinence), so there is no need to document these issues in a problem report.
"In order to restore in the world the reign of Jesus Christ, nothing is as necessary as the holiness of the clergy."
-- Pope Pius X, writing on May 5, 1904 (from the article "Ecclesiastical Seminary")
CATHOLIC ANSWERS:
