There are several good sources to learn what the Catholic Church actually teaches. Catechisms, especially the Roman Catechism and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, are two great places to start. To dig deeper, and to read actual magisterial sources of teaching, there are hardly any better books than Ludwig Ott’s “Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma” and Heinrich Denzinger’s “Enchiridion Symbolorum”, translated into English as “The Sources of Catholic Dogma”. The latter two books can be used in a complementary fashion by looking up a topic in Ott’s book and then finding the same topic (cited by Ott) in Denzinger’s work. Both books have excellent indices. Free versions in PDF are presented below.
Finally, scroll down to view and download Fr. Dominic Prummer’s “Handbook of Moral Theology”, a classic presentation of the Church’s moral teaching.
The Catechism of the Council of Trent (Roman Catechism)
- Why read the Roman Catechism? (LifeSiteNews.com)
- Here’s an example of how both the new and the old catechisms may be used in a complementary fashion to explicate a Catholic truth: A Victory of Truth
- History of the Roman Catechism (1907 Catholic Encyclopedia)
- free–> Catechism of the Council of Trent (online)
- free–> Catechism of the Council of Trent (Roman Catechism) (PDF. Good, with scriptural references, but no Table of Contents)
- free–> Catechism of the Council of Trent (Roman Catechism) or here (PDF. Includes a Table of Contents, but no references to the Scriptural verses cited)
- Catechism of the Council of Trent (Roman Catechism) (eBook from TAN Books. Can be read with eReader apps like ReadEra)
- Catechism of the Council of Trent (Roman Catechism) (hard copy from TAN Books)
- Catechism of the Council of Trent (Roman Catechism) (hard copy from Baronius Press)
- Catechism of the Council of Trent (Roman Catechism) (Kindle format from Amazon)
- free–> The Catechism of the Council of Trent, Translated Into English, with Notes by Theodore Alois Buckley (Online, with descriptive headers.)
- free–>The Catechism of the Council of Trent, or here, translated by Rev. J. Donovan (PDF, excellent scriptural citations in footnotes)
- Decree of the Council of Trent (PDF)
Catechism of the Catholic Church
- Catechism of the Catholic Church (Holy See online)
- Catechism of the Catholic Church (USCCB online)
- Scriptural Index to the Catechism of the Catholic Church
The Baltimore Catechism
Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma. By Dr. Ludwig Ott. Edited in English by James Canon Bastible, D.D., Translated from the German by Patrick Lynch, Ph.D. First published in English in May, 1955 by The Mercer Press, Limited, Cork, Ireland. First published in German in 1952, under the title Grundriss der Katholischen Dogmatik, by Verlag Herder, Freiburg.
The Sources of Catholic Dogma. Translated by Roy Joseph Deferrari from the thirtieth edition of Enchiridion Symbolorum by Heinrich Denzinger, revised by Karl Rahner, S.J., published in 1954, by Herder & Co., Freiburg.
Nihil Obstat: Dominic Hughes, O.P., Censor Duputatus
Imprimatur: Patrick A. O’Boyle, Archbishop of Washington, April 25, 1955.
Prümmer, O.P., Dominic M. Handbook of Moral Theology. Translated by Gerald W. Shelton S.T.L., 5th ed., Cork, The Mercier Press, Limited, 1956. Published in Germany in 1949, under the title Vadecum Theologiae Moralis, by Verlag Herder, Freiburg. The first edition was published on August 4, 1921 on the Feast of St. Dominic.