HUGE news from Logos Bible Software today: they’ve preempted the USCCB in making the first ever Catechism of the Catholic Church mobile application. It’s available on iPad, iPhone, and Android devices and comes with all of Logos’ awesome features–internal cross-referencing, pop-out excerpts, Scriptural links, and a whole lot more.
Here’s a video showing the Logos’ Catechism app in action on desktop computers. The mobile version functions similarly:
According to Logos:
“With the Catechism of the Catholic Church Collection, thousands of the Catechism’s citations come alive—linking to the original documents. The Collection allows you to get behind the Catechism’s summary of the faith and into the primary sources themselves. The Collection includes the most important texts cited by the Catechism and so allows one to see not just what the contemporary Catholic Church teaches, but what it bases this teaching on.
What’s more, the Catechism itself can be used as a type of commentary on the other texts in the collection. For example, one can quickly find every instance of the Catechism citing a certain document of Vatican II or a particular Bible verse. The Collection includes the lectionary of the Catholic Church, so the Catechism becomes an automatic companion to the daily readings.”
The mobile app is included free when you buy the Logos Catechism Package, which costs $49. It’s their cheapest Catholic package and gives you the Catechism; the conciliar documents of Vatican I, Vatican II, and Trent; Denzginer’s “Sources of Catholic Dogma”; and several others. You can access all the resources on all your portable devices–home computers, phones, tablets, whatever you got. Check it out!
(If you missed it before, here are 7 ways the Logos Catholic software will revolutionize your faith.)
UPDATE:
I received a lot of questions about this on Facebook so here’s some additional info:
1. I don’t work for Logos, nor do I receive anything for promoting them. I’m just a huge fan of their technology.
2. The Catechism app is technically not a stand-alone app. It’s tied into the free Logos mobile app. To access it, you download the Logos app from the Apple/Android app store. Then you purchase the Catechism package from Logos online and the package will show up in your library. An easy way to explain it is the free Logos software and app are like bookshelves, but you still have to buy the books. The Catechism package is one among many you can buy and access through the software and app.
3. As Jeff Geerling points out, this is a great solution for those wanting to seriously study the Catechism. But it may be too complex and pricey for the average user who just wants to look up a quick package. A $0.99/free mobile Catechism app is still desparately needed for those who don’t need all the Logos bells-and-whistles. Hopefully the USCCCB–or Jeff’s Open Source Catholic group!–will produce something like that soon.
4. You can access your Logos library, including the Catechism package, either in the cloud or by downloading them to your mobile device. It took just a couple second for me to download the whole Catechism package to my iPad for offline access.