lucastheophilus/magisterium-library

This repository is a digital library of official Catholic Church teaching documents, organized and stored in Markdown format. The goal is to preserve, organize, and make these texts easy to read, search, and navigate for anyone interested in studying them. The collection covers a specific range of Church documents, including encyclicals, apostolic constitutions, apostolic exhortations, apostolic letters, and other categories like declarations, instructions, and directories. The scope starts with the papacy of Pope Leo XIII in the late 19th century and continues to the present day. This means the library spans well over a century of official Church teaching across many popes and several councils. Documents are arranged by historical and documentary criteria. The main structure separates files by papacy, Holy See organisms, councils, and general reference documents. Each text is stored as a Markdown file, which is a plain text format that keeps documents lightweight and easy to search. This approach also supports version control, digital preservation, and reuse for academic study. The project maintains editorial fidelity to official editions. Any modifications are limited to formatting and structural concerns, and never alter the doctrinal content of the documents. Whenever possible, texts are transcribed directly from official Vatican publications at vatican.va. When an official source is unavailable, other recognized documentary sources may be used, with their origin identified. The project is still under active development. The collection is being built gradually, with new documents added and reviewed over time. Contributions such as corrections, suggestions, and improvements to organization or editorial quality are welcome. The repository's editorial structure and organization are distributed under the project's own license, while the Church texts themselves belong to their respective official sources and are included solely for consultation, study, and preservation.