Catholic Book Publishing

Yesterday Monsignor Alan Detscher and I drove down to New Jersey for a meeting with Catholic Book Publishing. The Monsignor, recently retired, has been editing and publishing liturgical resources for decades. I met him by chance at a clergy association lunch, and he is very interested in The Lutheran Missal project. (His collection of Lutheran liturgical resources, which includes The Brotherhood Prayer Book and Daily Divine Service Book, is larger than my entire library.)

We met with Bob Cavalero, third-generation owner of Catholic Book Publishing. Bob has worked with the Monsignor for years, publishing, for example, his white leather-bound missal for Pope John Paul II’s 1995 tour of the East Coast. Catholic Book Publishing’s work is exquisite; they know and understand missals like no other company I have encountered.

Every detail, down to the cut of the ribbons (which minimizes damage to the pages) shows the level of thought and detail poured into these missals.

In order to achieve the high page count of a missal in a comparatively thin spine, Catholic Book Publishing uses a Japanese paper that is almost as thin as Bible paper but has double the opacity and tear strength. (See the comparison photos below.) Of course, the ordinaries at the center of the missals are printed on a thicker paper because they see far more use. As an aside, Bob explained that if a missal includes a chrism mass, that signature is printed on an oil-resistant paper.

Pictured below on the left is the chapel edition of their 1300-page missal. For reference, the book on the right by another publisher has 1000 pages.

The 8.5″ x 11″ Altar Edition of their missal is truly a work of art. Here is a book that will not look out of place upon the Altar of Christ.

Our visit to New Jersey, which included lunch with Bob and his assistant, was a resounding success, and our search for a printing house is happily concluded. Did Bob have any issues printing a missal for Emmanuel Press, or, for that matter, for Lutherans? No. Do we need to worry about minimum print quantities in order to do business? No. What about a personal/travel edition, or Gospel and Epistle books? No problem—Bob and Catholic Book Publishing will be pleased to print all of these when the time comes.