This website is the home site of my criminal reformation apostolate; here you can find details about the Lampstand Foundation which I founded as a 501c (3) nonprofit corporation in Sacramento, California in 2003.

I have written twelve books, one being about Lampstand and each one of the other eleven being a response to a likely objection to Catholicism that will be encountered when doing ministry to professional criminals; and for links to all of the Lampstand books which are available—free to members—and at Amazon, go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=david+h+lukenbill

I also maintain a daily blog, The Catholic Eye, https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/

Lampstand also keeps track of rehabilitative programs that fail, and the one or two that appear to work, with the findings available at https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/evaluation-of-reentry-programs-3/

The work connected to the apostolate is listed under the home page categories (to your left) which I will be expanding as needed.

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Lampstand E Letter: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Greatest Catholic Book of the 20th Century

In a recent article from the Catholic Herald the author notes how studying the Catechism brought him to conversion and I heartily echo that claim.

I love this book and have several editions—the 1992 First Edition plus its two supplemental volumes, the 1997 Second Edition, the 1556 Council of Trent Edition (both translations, McHugh/Callan & Donovan), the 1941 Baltimore Catechism, and a pocket edition of the First Edition I keep bedside.

I recently added the Didache Bible: With Commentaries based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church to my library and suspect I’ll add other Catechism related works as time goes on.

It truly is, in my mind, the greatest work published by the Church in the last century.

My absolute favorite is the First Edition https://www.amazon.com/Catechism-Catholic-Libreria-Editrice-Vaticana/dp/0819815195/ref=sr_ , though I often defer to the online Second Edition on the Vatican website when quoting from it, http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM

Part of what I love about the first edition is The Companion to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: A Compendium of Texts Referred to in the Catechism of the Catholic Church https://www.amazon.com/Companion-Catechism-Catholic-Church-Compendium/dp/0898704510/ref=sr_ .

This 980 page volume, whose “purpose of the present volume is to gather together in a single source this wealth of reference texts and documents for the convenience of the English-speaking reader of the Catechism” (p. 7) is invaluable.

Another supplemental volume is the Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Catechism-Catholic-Cardinal-Ratzinger/dp/0898704855/ref=sr_ by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger & Christoph Schonborn.

All three volumes have matching beige covers and represent a complete and full means of exploring this greatest of all Catholic books from the last century.

Here is an excerpt from the Catholic Herald article.

I have never argued more with a book than the one that sits before me now. When I open my dog-eared copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, I see page after page covered in pencil marks. The comments, written almost 20 years ago, read like those of a stranger: someone trying to argue his way out of becoming a Catholic.

As I flick through the book, with its yellowed and broken spine, I see expressions of bafflement and even outrage. I dismissed one section (83) as “Essentialised tradition”. Next to another (107) I simply wrote “difficulties”. But as the pages turn, there are fewer objections.

I remember marvelling at the Catechism’s elegant structure: its four parts – the Profession of Faith, the Celebration of the Christian Mystery, Life in Christ and Christian Prayer – serving as a firm foundation for the soaring tower of Catholic teaching.

I was impressed that the book not only explained what Catholics believe, but also how to be a Catholic. I had expected it to be a dry-as-dust manual, but it had such zeal and beauty that my objections to Catholicism collapsed one by one, until none remained.

It was only later that I discovered how controversial the Catechism had been within the Catholic Church. As Cardinal Christoph Schönborn explains in an interview marking the book’s 25th anniversary, there were “violent discussions” over whether a universal Catechism was desirable or even possible.

“The main argument of the opponents of this project,” he recalls, “was: it is impossible to create a book of faith for the entire world – a Catechism for the whole world Church – today, in the face of the pluralism of cultures, theologies and narratives. This was the most massive counter-argument against the project.

“I think Cardinal Ratzinger took this challenge very seriously. It was ultimately a question of a fundamental theological opinion: can faith today be formulated as one faith in a common form?”

Retrieved November 4, 2017 from http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2017/10/11/without-the-catechism-i-might-never-have-become-catholic/