Tech Tips for Catholics

A lot of times when you hear the word “free” associated with something, there is some sort of catch. Get a “free” vacation, if you sit through a 3 hour time-share meeting. You can get one free, but first you have to buy one at a price slightly higher than retail. You can get “free” downloads of movies, games and other things, except it is illegal in most cases.

The fact is, very few things in life are free. However, one of the biggest free gifts to us, is that of our faith, and that of God’s great sacrifice of love for us. Our God and Father loved us so much that he gave us his only Son, that we might have life through His death and resurrection. God’s love for us is free, we do nothing to deserve it, to earn it or to pay for it, with the exception of choosing to love Him back. Even if we don’t make that choice, he still loves us.

Recently, I discovered a website that really does give something away for free. It is a library of books and writings that have all gone out of copyright, so nobody owns the works to charge for them. Some of the titles include Frankenstein, The War of the Worlds, Alice in Wonderland and many other classic titles that you may have heard of in english class.

The website is called Project Gutenberg and can be found at www.gutenberg.org . As you may remember, Gutenberg developed the printing press, and it is the goal of Project Gutenberg to continue his work of spreading information through modern means. It is their goal to find books that are out of print, out of copyright or otherwise in the public domain and to make them available for download to the world.
Everything listed on the site is free. Again, there are books from many famous authors, including Shakespeare. There are even free audio versions of some of these books as well!

The best part is, Project Gutenberg also has works of the Early Church Fathers! They have The Confessions of St. Augestine, St. Thomas Aquinas’ Suma Theologica and even a history of the Catholic Church up to the French Revolution. Given, there are also works by Luther but, the fact is there are important theological resources available to everyone for FREE.

God so loved us that he gave up his only Son that we might have eternal life. This was the ultimate free gift of God to us, that and the Eucharist, the source and summit of our faith. Just remember, there is very little in the world that is truly free. We need to appreciate those things that are truly given to us free, and use them for the greater glory of our Lord. Project Gutenberg can assist in this by bringing great literary classics to us for free, as well as some great Christian history and theology as well.