From The Deacon’s Bench:

The St. Anthony Messenger Press, the Cincinnati-based national provider of inspirational and educational Roman Catholic spirituality resources, announced Monday it is redefining its strategy and reducing staffing.

Father Dan Kroger said the 116-year-old communications company, based in Over-the-Rhine and sponsored by the Franciscan Friars of St. John the Baptist Province, is offering voluntary early retirement to eligible employees, closed its Cincinnati Call Center and will stop using its independent field sales force.

St. Anthony Messenger has long been on our list of publishers to buy very little from because they tend to publish heterodox authors. I have also been pretty leary of their Catholic Update that I frequently see in parish literature racks. I recently found an older edition from several years back that suggested contraception use is a matter of conscience for a couple.

A couple of years ago St. Anthony Messenger purchased Servant Publications, a thoroughly orthodox publisher that we had been working with for a while. I assumed that they did it to put up an orthoodox front for the company. After a single attempt to produce a single mixed catalog for both companies that met with a lot of protest, they went back to separating the two into different catalogs or into completely separate sections of the trade catalog.

I found the end of the article particular telling and it doesn’t bode well for the publisher:

He [Father Dan Kroger] also said the traditional Catholic audience is shrinking and the subscriber base is declining.

It may be that HIS traditional audience is shrinking – the audience that likes dissidents – but the audience that actually appreciates true Catholicism isn’t shrinking. The fact that he can’t see that makes me doubt the company’s ability to adapt to the changing attitudes among Catholics.

Following up on yesterday’s post about the anti-holiness kids book published by Paulist Press, I thought it might be helpful to go through the various publishers we deal with to help you make decisions as individual readers and also as Catholic store owners when you are trying to choose titles to carry.

This is very important to us because of our Good Faith Guarantee.

Basically, we divide our publishers into five groups:

1. Pope Benedict’s Library. These publishers make a point of carrying books that promote and defend the Faith. You can pretty much order any book from them without worry that the content is questionably Catholic. These books are also distinguished by their substantial content – no fluff here.
2. The University of Steubenville Library – Very good books for the most part with a few fluffy titles and possible a stray questionable title in the mix. Ninety-five percent of the time you can buy from them without a worry.
3. The Parish Library – You can find some very good stuff here, you can find some very bad stuff here. It all depends on who the librarian was.
4. The Matthew Fox Circle of Energy Reading Room – Don’t buy anything from this publisher unless you find it on our site. They don’t have any problem publishing heresy with a few stray orthodox titles that somehow got mixed in.
5. The Marcus Aurelius Library – These are books from publishers that aren’t Catholic and the books may not necessarily be specifically Catholic but have a Catholic world view.

Before I actually provide the list, please be aware that we aren’t the arbiters of orthodoxy, we just go by what the Church teaches and make our own judgments based on that. If you happen to be a publisher and think you are being unfairly categorized please contact us so we can update our list. This list isn’t meant to be a blanket condemnation of any publishers either. There are always a few good books available from any of these companies and by buying those books you will encourage them to produce more good titles.

I have moved the list over to our bookstore so it can be kept current there.
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