Louis Bouyer

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Louis Bouyer (17 February 1913 22 October 2004) was a French Lutheran minister who converted to
Catholicism in 1939. During his religious career he was a scholar who was relied upon during the Second
Vatican Council.
He was known for his books on Christian spirituality and its history. Along with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
and others, he was a co-founder of the international review Communio. He was chosen by the pope to be
part of a team to initiate the International Theological Commission in 1969.

Contents
1 Biography
2 Published works in English
3 Footnotes
4 Bibliography
5 External links

Biography
Born into a Protestant family in Paris, Louis Bouyer, after a receiving a degree from the Sorbonne, studied
theology with the Protestant faculties of Paris and then Strasbourg. He was ordained a Lutheran minister in
1936 and served as vicar of the Lutheran parish of the Trinity in Paris until World War II. In 1939, the study
of the christology and ecclesiology of St. Athanasius of Alexandria led Bouyer to the Catholic Church.
Received into the Catholic Church in the Abbey of Saint-Wandrille (Seine-Maritime) in 1944, he entered the
congregation of the priests of the Oratory, and remained with them the rest of his life. He was a professor at
the Catholic Institute of Paris until 1963 and then taught in England, Spain, and the United States. In 1969
he wrote the book The Decomposition of Catholicism, which presented what he saw as important liturgical
and dogmatic problems in the Church.
Twice appointed by the pope to the International Theological Commission, he was a consultant at the
Second Vatican Council for the liturgy, the Congregation of Sacred Rites and Secretariat for Christian Unity.
In 1999 he received the Cardinal-Grente prize of the French Academy for all his work. He died 22 October
2004 in Paris, a victim of many years of Alzheimer's. He was buried in the cemetery of the Abbey of SaintWandrille.

Published works in English

The Paschal Mystery. Meditations on the Last Three Days of Holy Week (1951)
Life and Liturgy (Liturgical Piety) (1955)

The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism (1956)

Newman: His Life and Spirituality (London: Burns & Oates, 1958)
Introduction to Spirituality (1961)
The Word, Church and Sacraments in Protestantism and Catholicism (1961)
Liturgy and Architecture (1967)
The Decomposition of Catholicism (Chicago, 1969)
The Spirituality of the New Testament and the Fathers (History of Christian Spirituality; v. 1) (1982)
The Spirituality of the Middle Ages (History of Christian Spirituality; v. 2) (1982)
Eucharist: Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer (1989)
The Church of God: Body of Christ and Temple of the Holy Spirit (2011)
The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and
After (Angelico Press, August 2015)

Footnotes
Bibliography
"Le mtier de thologien" - Interviews with Georges Daix, ditions France-Empire, 1979.
"Trois liturgistes. Hritage et actualit. Louis Bouyer, Pierre Jounel, Pierre-Marie Gy", review La
Maison-Dieu, No. 246, 2006, 183 p.
De Rmur, Guillaume Brut. La thologie trinitaire de Louis Bouyer, Editrice Pontificia Universit
Gregoriana, Rome, 2010, 378 p.
Duchesne, Jean. Louis Bouyer, ed. Artge, Perpignan, 2011, 127 p.
Zordan, Davide. Connaissance et mystre. L'itinraire thologique de Louis Bouyer, Paris: Editions du
Cerf, 2008, 807 p.

External links
Louis Bouyer biography on IgnatiusInsight.com (http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/authors/louisbouyer.
asp)
Louis Bouyer profile and books on Goodreads (http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/297955.Louis
_Bouyer)
Louis Bouyer and Church Architecture (http://www.sacredarchitecture.org/articles/louis_bouyer_and_
church_architecture)
Mark Brumley, Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work: Louis Bouyer on the
Reformation (http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0097.html), on the Catholic
Education Resource Center webpage; reprinted from Mark Brumley. "Why Only Catholicism Can
Make Protestantism Work: Louis Bouyer on the Reformation," Catholic Dossier 7 no. 5 (September
October 2001): 3035.
Mark Brumley, Why Catholicism Makes Protestantism Tick: Louis Bouyer on the Reformation (http://
ignatiusinsight.com/features/mbrumley_bouyer1_nov04.asp), on the Ignatius Insight (http://ignatiusin
sight.com/index.asp) webpage (November 2004).
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Louis_Bouyer&oldid=725773096"
Categories: 1913 births 2004 deaths People from Paris Roman Catholic theologians
French Roman Catholics Converts to Roman Catholicism from Lutheranism Oratorians
International Theological Commission
This page was last modified on 17 June 2016, at 19:33.

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