The creation of the Catholic Encyclopedia, first published in 1913, was a great intellectual achievement. The need for a Catholic encyclopedia in English had been manifest for many years before it was decided to publish one. This need was felt more acutely when, at the beginning of this century, new editions of several of general Encyclopedias appeared in which many subjects of special interest to Catholics were either ignored entirely or else scantily and even erroneously treated.

On February 25, 1905, several Catholic publishers signed a contract to produce the Catholic Encyclopedia. Two years were spent in studying every phase of the project, in planning the details and in selecting the requisite methods for carrying out the work carefully and expeditiously. The scope, aim and chief characteristics of the Encyclopedia, were described as follows:

• The Catholic Encyclopedia, as its name implies, proposes to give its readers full and authoritative information on the entire sphere of Catholic interests, action and doctrine.
  
  
• It is not exclusively a church Encyclopedia, nor is it limited to the ecclesiastical sciences and the doings of churchmen. It records all that Catholics have done, not only in behalf of charity and morals, but also for the intellectual and artistic development of mankind.
  
  
• Designed to present its readers with the full body of Catholic teaching, the Encyclopedia contains not only precise statements of what the Church has defined, but also an impartial record of different views of acknowledged authority on all disputed questions, national, political or factional.
  
  
• Representing Catholic scholarship in every part of the world, the work has an international character.
  
  
• From the outset, the ablest available writer should prepare each article.

The list of authors included 1452 names, representing 43 countries, sufficiently attesting the international character of the Encyclopedia. In reviewing the articles, the editors were aided by a well-trained corps of assistants numbering in the course of the work 151, through whose hands the edited article passed on its way to the press. The Catholic Encyclopedia was completed in 1913 and then revised and indexed in 1915.

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