Free Resources
The primary purpose of Aquinas and Beyond is to help other people study the Catholic Intellectual Tradition in philosophy, theology and literature. One way I want to do that is to show you where to find the texts themselves of the tradition. There are already many free resources out there for those who know where to look, so this page will serve as a page with all the resources I know about (and sometimes a few tips for how to best use them). I will add to it every time I find something new; I’m always looking for good resources.
I do not necessarily endorse every single thing on these websites, though I wouldn’t post them if I didn’t think there could be a reasonable presumption of appropriate content.
You’ve probably heard of New Advent before. They have the entire Catholic Encyclopedia, the Summa Theologiae, the works of the Church Fathers, the Bible and many other Church Documents, all available on their website for free. It’s an awesome resource that every Catholic should know about.
Encyclopedia of Catholic Theology
The ECT is a new resource that is still in progress, but I’m as excited about it as any site on this page. They have professional, peer-reviewed articles that are completely open-sourced. Only 11 articles at the time of writing this, but their list of articles in progress is probably over 100 articles long. And they’re still growing!
The National Institute for Newman Studies
This site has almost every work by John Henry Newman from his Catholic AND Anglican periods available on their site. They’ll also point you to where you can download many of those works. Like NewAdvent for Newman.
You’ve probably heard of them, but just in case: the Gutenberg Project has transferred tens of thousands of public-domain books into ebooks of basically every format. I’ve known about the Gutenberg Project for a while, but I only recently discovered that there are quite a few Catholic classics on there: Chesterton, Liguori, Newman, Augustine, Aquinas and Ambrose all have at least a book or two on Gutenberg, and several have more (Chesterton, for example, has well over 10 books on the Gutenberg Project, including most of his most famous ones).
Standard EBooks is like the Gutenberg Project with some flair and professionalism. Though they have far fewer books, they convert Gutenberg Project ebooks (and others) into professional-quality ebooks, like you would buy on the Kindle store. Several Chesterton, Belloc, Newman and even a Walter Miller Jr. are already there.
Christian Classics Ethereal Library
This is technically a protestant site hosted by Calvin College, but it has tons of Catholic classics available for download, including the entire set of Phillip Schaff’s Ante-Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers, considered more or less the authoritative English translation of many of the Early Church Fathers.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
This is the gold-standard encyclopedic resource for academic philosophy, and it is completely free. If you’re looking to understand where the field currently stands on basically any topic, the SEP should be your first stop.
Another internet classic, they have many scans of public-domain books you can download, and some scholarship you can borrow (but not download) as well.
Internet Enyclopedia of Philosophy
Another open-source encyclopedia for academic philosophy. If the SEP doesn’t have what you want, this is another excellent source.
A searchable, easy-to-use Catechism offered by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. I use this version all the time. Don’t sleep on the value of the Catechism!
More than just encyclicals, this site links to just about any papal document you could possibly want. Go crazy.
All of Aquinas’ works from the Aquinas institute in English and Latin. What more needs to be said?
Open-Source Journals
This journal was originally published by a man who eventually became a cardinal, Charles Journet, and was affiliated with Jacques Maritain. It’s not technically open-source, but you can legally access all of their issues online at the link above through the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology.
This is the official journal of the Society for Christian Philosophers. Not explicitly Catholic, but Catholics publish here frequently, and the articles are completely free to read and download.
Religions does not have a great reputation amongst professional philosophers, but there are many good articles on here, and again, it’s all free. This is also not explicitly Catholic, or even Christian, but again, Catholic philosophers and theologians publish in this journal all the time.
This is a Catholic Philosophy Journal from Poland that frequently features top Catholic philosophers, including many in English. And while they do not say that they are open-source, I have yet to see them publish anything that was not available for free download.
TheoLogica: An International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology
A, open-source, top-flight philosophy of religion journal that frequently publishes Catholic work.