Louis Bouyer was once a big determine within the Church of the final century. those memoirs, which Bouyer wrote in a humble and funny vein--though with out withholding his notoriously sharp pen while needed--allow the reader to go into with him into the good occasions that shook the Church and the realm through the period of upheavals and differences during which he lived. They quantity to an clever, delicate, and pious man’s interesting chronicle and deep mirrored image on Christianity’s lifestyles and travails in an international dedicated to modernity. Bouyer right here tells us the total and sundry tale of a existence dedicated to the invention of the assets and culture of the Church in doctrine, spirituality, liturgy, and scripture.

We stick with Bouyer’s trips from his inherited Protestantism to the fullness of the Catholic religion, from his place as a Lutheran pastor to the priesthood within the Oratory of France, from humble parish existence to the Olympian heights of his professional theological and liturgical collaboration (and problems) ahead of and after the Council with such influential figures as Congar, Daniélou, de Lubac, Bugnini, and... Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI). Bouyer paints the luxurious panorama of a century’s illusions and disenchantments; his memoirs are crucial for knowing the background of the Church in the course of that momentous time.

“It will be very unlikely for somebody to talk knowledgeably approximately liturgical advancements long ago 50 years with out being cognizant of the paintings performed by means of Louis Bouyer. His Memoirs, which characteristic his outspoken evaluations and profound intelligence in addition to a character deeply imbued with the genuine spirit of the Catholic liturgy, can function a stability and maybe an antidote to incorrect information concerning the post-Vatican II advancements within the Sacred Liturgy of the Latin ceremony. A cautious perusal of those Memoirs, now on hand in English in a superb translation via John Pepino, may also function a corrective to the occasionally unbridled and euphoric optimism that marked liturgical reviews within the past due Nineteen Sixties and early Nineteen Seventies. i can't suggest strongly sufficient the examining and examine of this work.”--BISHOP (EMERITUS) FABIAN BRUSKEWITZ, Lincoln, NE

“While Father Louis Bouyer used to be a prolific writer in lots of fields of theology, his longest enduring legacy could be his contribution to liturgical renewal, together with his collaboration within the post-conciliar reform of the Roman ceremony. Bouyer is a pointy observer, and his retrospective is frank and now and then caustic. here's the real voice of a key witness to momentous advancements in twentieth-century Catholicism. The booklet of those vital memoirs makes a true contribution to writing the heritage of the Church in our times.”--FR. UWE MICHAEL LANG, Cong. Orat.; Heythrop university, college of London

“Louis Bouyer was once, based on his former pupil Cardinal Lustiger “the least conformist and but one of the most standard” of theologians--a fact borne out in those memoirs, which exhibit Bouyer sinking ever-deeper roots in Catholic culture in addition to his ever-present skill to examine concerns with a clean, serious eye. Expertly translated and edited with extra notes for English readers, The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer not just offers very important ancient info hitherto unpublished--particularly in regards to the liturgical circulate and post-conciliar reform--but additionally bargains a lesson within the nature of residing Catholic Tradition.”--DOM ALCUIN REID, Monastère Saint-Benoît, l. a. Garde-Freinet, France

“Louis Bouyer in his Memoirs provides us a gripping, witty, firsthand account of an international of variously amiable and offensive humans, revolving round the large highbrow fermentations, social upheavals, and non secular battles that preceded and succeeded the second one Vatican Council. nobody fascinated by the Church’s modern background and the destiny of her culture can manage to pay for to be unacquainted with this book.”—PETER KWASNIEWSKI, Wyoming Catholic College