How to Cover the Catholic Church

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Catholic Press Directory with more detailed information about those publica-
tions. It costs $50 and can be ordered on the Web site.
OTHER RESOURCES ON THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
Catholic Almanac is an annual publication of Our Sunday Visitor, a large
Catholic publishing house in Indiana. The 2007 edition costs $24.95. It
includes highlights of news in the Catholic world from the previous year;
summaries of Catholic teaching on faith, morality and social teaching; a glos-
sary of Catholic terminology; an overview of church law, liturgy, sacraments,
church history, and the organization of the church worldwide and in the
United States, including a list of U.S. bishops; and articles on various aspects
of the church and its work, such as Catholic religious life, apostolates, social
services, education, communications, and ecumenical and interreligious rela-
tions. It can be ordered by phone at 800-348-2440 or online at
If you click “Books” and “OSV’s Catholic Almanac” from the home page, you
can also access portions of the almanac online, including its glossary.
Catholicism USA: A Portrait of the Catholic Church in the United States
and Global Catholicism: Portrait of a World Church, both by Bryan T. Froehle
and Mary L. Gautier of CARA (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2000 and 2003,
respectively) are significant studies in Catholic demographics, practices and
trends in the United States and the world. The former relies heavily on CARA’s
own extensive studies of U.S. Catholicism over the past four decades, the lat-
ter more on annual reports of the Vatican’s Statistical Yearbook of the Church
(Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae) since 1970 and on other national and
international surveys and studies over those years.
CNS Stylebook on Religion: A Reference Guide and Usage Manual, third
edition (Washington, D.C.: Catholic News Service, 2006), provides news
reporters and writers with valuable practical descriptions and definitions of
Catholic and other Christian terminology as well as background on other
religions. It is geared toward helping journalists explain religious terminol-
ogy to a more general readership that may include many people unfamiliar
with that terminology. Among helpful appendixes are lists of Catholic reli-
gious orders by both names and initials, translations of the names of Vatican
agencies and titles of Vatican officials, and descriptions of the structure of the
USCCB. It is the official stylebook used by CNS and, with minor variations,
by most of its publishing clients. The cost is $19.95. Phone 202-541-3250;
mail Catholic News Service, Stylebook on Religion, 3211 Fourth Street NE,
Washington, DC 20017-1194; e-mail der online at