As soon as the weather warms up sufficiently the District is waiting to accomplish a long awaited project. It is the building of a new large commercial building for Angelus Press. When the District office moved to Kansas City in 1991 and Angelus Press in 1992, we both vacated school facilities, allowing the schools to expand, Queen of the Holy Rosary in St. Louis, MO and Queen of Angels in Dickinson, TX. When we first moved here, the 33 room four level building of the Regina Coeli House was ample for all our needs, Angelus Press taking the basement and first floor and the District Office the second and third floors. However, with time and the development of the Society’s apostolate nationwide, and the multifold growth of Angelus Press, both Angelus Press and the District Office ran out of space long ago. Secretaries are crowded two to a room, and rooms are used for multiple different purposes. For now, as well as five priests, their living facilities and offices, and rooms for visitors and workers, you will find in the Regina Coeli House seven full time lay people working for the District and six for Angelus Press.

Hence the time is ripe for the construction of a new building for Angelus Press, on land immediately adjacent to the Regina Coeli House. This will enable for the continued expansion of the publishing activities of Angelus Press, increasing their storage capacity for stock and titles, but especially increasing their efficiency for shipping and handling. No longer will it be necessary to carry every book into a basement and out of a basement. This one level metal building has been designed for ease of shipping and handling, and storage, with a complete office area, the whole with central air conditioning to protect the books from the humidity. The 5,000 square foot building will cost, all told, $250,000. It will also be of great help to the District administration, for it will enable the District Headquarters and the priory to expand into the areas of the Regina Coeli House previously occupied by the Angelus Press.

The Angelus Press is being run efficiently as a business, and is able to pay all its bills and salaries, without being dependent upon the District or getting into debt. However, it is simply not possible for the Angelus to find the funds to finance a new building of this magnitude. Consequently, I am asking for your generous support and help to make this project possible. I rarely ask for money, but our donations did diminish somewhat during the year 2000, and I do believe that the apostolate of the Catholic press is a worthy one. Nothing can replace good Catholic books in helping Catholics to understand the crisis in the Church and to deepen our spiritual lives.

Concerning the importance of good, doctrinally solid, reading I cannot do better than quote the words of our holy patron saint, to all the world’s Catholic clergy, words which apply to all generous souls:

"Now we ought to make pious books our faithful friends. They tell us of our duties and they give rules of legitimate discipline; they arouse the heavenly voices that are silent in our souls; they chastise the idleness of our designs; they disturb our deceitful tranquillity; they throw into a clear light our less worthy affections that are sometimes disguised; they show the dangers that lie before the imprudent. All these favors they show us with such silent benevolence that we may regard them not only as friends, but as the best of friends. For, indeed, we have them whenever we wish, clinging as it were to our side, ready at any time to assist us in our immediate necessities —whose voice is never harsh, whose advice never partial, and whose words are never timid or deceitful." (Saint Pius X, Haerent animo, August 4, 1908)

Such is the importance of the supernatural wisdom and prudence that Angelus Press strives to make available through its books and magazine. Let us be convinced that these advantages of good books are perennial, and will not be replaced by other means of communication, neither visual nor electronic. There is, in effect, a tendency amongst certain of our faithful to place undue importance on electronic communications through the Internet. While adapted for the rapid communication of facts, data or scientific information, it is the means least adapted to the communication of wisdom, and least apt for preparing souls for an understanding of the truth. For there is nothing that more tantalizes our disordered curiosity, provoking us to always see and hear something new, to be up with what everybody is saying. But it is this very preoccupation with the quantitative aspect of information transfer that most impairs our ability to absorb qualitatively and make our own the truths our souls need to breathe. The Internet provokes the desire for endless exchanges of ideas or for arguments, but does not bring about the resolution that the discernment of truth gives to the soul nor the peace of solid, interior conviction nor the recollection of meditation.

Nothing can replace the listening to sermons and conferences on the supernatural truths of our Faith, and the reading of good books. However, everything in the world will divert our attention from these soul-saving occupations. Let us not despise the books that God has given us, starting from the Holy Scriptures, that ought to be not only present, but even read every day in our homes. Let the Catechism be studied in every family every day, for it contains the basic truths upon which our life hinges, and not just our Sundays or our school days. Let us cherish our favorite saints, whose lives and activities we delight to read, and let us keep at hand the spiritual reading to satiate our souls when they come home famished from this empty world. Books are here to stay, regardless of the changes in the world. Let them be a part of our lives and our family’s lives, and let us remember that those of us who read will understand the crisis in the Church, and the devil’s maneuver’s and that those of us who do not will not; that those of us who read will have the desire to progress in the spiritual life, and those who do not will not; that those of us who read will have the desire to fight against the modern liberal errors and for the Kingship of Christ, whereas those who do not will not.

Let every family take care to build up a small library of the books that really matter, and let a daily time for reading, with the silence and recollection that this necessarily entails, be set aside. In this way will be laid the seed of the reflection, meditation and personal conviction, by which your children will desire to pass on in turn the deposit of the Faith that you have given on to them.

The Angelus Press apostolate of entirely Catholic books and magazines is consequently not an optional extra. It is an integral part of our Catholic lives, and it is the Society’s duty to make it available to our faithful. Your response to this appeal and your willingness to help out is much appreciated, as are your continued prayers, upon which we are entirely dependent for our continued success and growth every day.

On this eve of the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, may the Mother Most Pure grant us the grace to continually offer ourselves at Holy Mass together and with the Infant Son of God offered in the temple.

In the Immaculate Heart,

Fr. Peter R. Scott