Writers and editors have a number of standard reference works to consult — dictionaries, style manuals, usage guides — but these are of limited help when you need to look up Catholic terminology. So I thought I’d share some of the reference sources I’ve found useful when copyediting and proofreading Catholic written material. You may already know some of them.
CNS Stylebook on Religion is published by Catholic News Service. As of the fourth edition, it is available only as an e-book. Its format is similar to that of the Associated Press Stylebook — not surprising, since both are designed primarily for journalists. But anyone who writes about the Catholic Church could find the CNS Stylebook’s more than one thousand entries helpful. This reference work is filled with updated definitions of Catholic terms along with guidelines for proper usage. Appendixes include lists of religious orders, Vatican agencies, and Vatican II documents.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Style Guide describes the house style used in USCCB publications. It’s based on the widely used Chicago Manual of Style but it does deviate in some areas. While much of the book specifically applies to the practices of the USCCB, there is general guidance in areas such as capitalization of liturgical, sacramental, and theological terms.
Fr. John A. Hardon, SJ, wrote Modern Catholic Dictionary over thirty years ago, and to my knowledge his compilation of approximately five thousand definitions has not been exceeded by any similar work since then. An abridged and updated edition of Fr. Hardon’s work, titled simply Catholic Dictionary, was published earlier this year, but it contains only about two thousand entries. Fortunately, the original is still available in reprint form and online. There is also an online thesaurus based on this dictionary.
Our Sunday Visitor’s Catholic Dictionary, edited by Fr. Peter M. J. Stravinskas, has over three thousand entries, and includes a pronunciation guide, lists of popes and Church councils, abbreviations, and ecclesiastical forms of address. The word list from this dictionary is also available online.
For fact checking, Our Sunday Visitor’s Catholic Almanac provides up-to-date information each year on numerous topics such as current events, statistics, Church history and teachings, and the liturgical calendar. It can be found in the reference department of many public libraries.
Roget’s Thesaurus of the Bible, by A. Colin Day, is not a Catholic reference work but it can be useful to anyone who needs to look up a Bible verse. Unlike a concordance, which is tied to one particular translation, this book is organized by categories and concepts — just like Roget’s International Thesaurus — rather than by specific words, and therefore can be used with any Bible version. Though the book has gone out of print, used copies are readily available.
The above list is not intended to be comprehensive (I left out the essential Catechism of the Catholic Church only because it’s widely known). If you have a favorite reference work, feel free to mention it in a comment.
Stephen Weisenbach
Stephen Weisenbach is a freelance copy editor and proofreader, and guest-posts editor for the Catholic Writers Guild blog. He has worked with a number of Catholic media organizations, including Scepter Publishers, Circle Media, Catholic News Agency, Tiber River, and FultonSheen.com, as well as ad agencies serving national accounts. You can reach Steve at sweisenbach @ ymail.com.
Thanks so much for these resources. I’ve been relying on Chicago Manual and AP’s Stylebook and The Word but I need a little more instruction on some of the terms I use. I guess I thought that since I worked at a Catholic newspaper I didn’t need to look any of this up, but I see that I do. I’ve gotten the CNS ebook for a start.
Thanks, Stephen. I didn’t know about some of these works. One thing I don’t like about the CNS Stylebook is that they dropped almost all capitalization of religious terms. Does the USCCB book do the same? If you’re a journalist or freelancer for the Catholic press, you should follow these guidelines, as I do in my newspaper columns. However, on my blog and in my books I have my own rules about capitalization. I capitalize pronouns referring to God, the words Bible, Sacred Scripture, and the names of the sacraments. In my view, this shows more respect for the sacred. I think the important thing is to be consistent. Of course, various publishers will have their preferences as well.
Yes, I’ve seen how capitalization preferences vary among publishers. Regarding your question about the USCCB Style Guide, according to their guidelines, pronouns referring to God are lowercased (which is the style used in the Catechism of the Catholic Church), but titles of God, Jesus, and Mary are capitalized; the words Bible and Scripture and the names of the sacraments are capitalized except when used as adjectives; parts of the Mass and references to the Church are capitalized. In any case, consistency is important, as you said.
Thanks for the information.