The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer Quotes

“The only reunion that is not a chimera or a simple fig-leaf can only occur through the common rediscovery of a living fullness, unencumbered by anything negative, with the mutual acknowledgement of complementarity or quite simply harmony (this latter point applying especially to the rapprochement between Catholic and Orthodox) of the positive that is held on either side, and which seems to be in opposition only because the rest, unfortunately tacked on, masks or chokes its authentic reality. But”
― Louis Bouyer, The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After

“He was utterly incapable of resisting the maneuvers of the mealy-mouthed scoundrel that the Neapolitan Vincentian, Bugnini,77 a man as bereft of culture as he was of basic honesty, soon revealed himself to be. Even”
― Louis Bouyer, The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After

“there is a meaning in our life. The hand of God leads us to it, using all things for his purposes: failures, disillusionments, as well as and even more than successes, moments of happiness, or what seems to us to be such, and, what is most astounding, even our glaring faults!”
― Louis Bouyer, Memoirs

“I should add that all that my teachers would later teach me of the superiority of character-driven comedy over situation comedy never managed to uproot from me every child’s conviction: that those who hurl cream pies at each other’s faces are funny in a far more relaxing, and, therefore, at bottom more satisfying way, than the more subtle forms of what is called “wit.” In fact, it is quite remarkable that these latter forms usually grow stale in less than a generation.”
― Louis Bouyer, The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After

“On several occasions, whether the scuttling of the liturgy of the dead or even that incredible enterprise to expurgate the Psalms for use in the Divine Office,102 Bugnini ran into an opposition that was not only massive but also, one might say, close to unanimous. In such cases, he didn’t hesitate to say: “But the Pope wills it!” After that, of course, there was no question of discussing the matter any further. Yet, one day when he had made use of that argument I had a lunch appointment with my friend Msgr. Del Gallo, who as privy Chamberlain had a flat right above the papal apartments at the time.103 As I was coming back down—after the siesta, of course—and came out of the lift onto the Cortile San Damaso,104 Bugnini in person was emerging from the staircase on his way in from the Bronze Gate. At the sight of me, he didn’t just turn pale: he was visibly aghast. I straightaway understood that, knowing me to be notus pontifici,105 he supposed I had just been with the pope. But in my innocence I simply could not guess why he would be so terrorized at the idea that I might have had an interview with the pope regarding our affairs. I would be given the answer, though weeks later, by Paul VI himself. As he was discussing our famous work with me, work which he had finally ratified without being much more satisfied with it than I was, he said to me: “Now why did you do [x] in the reform?” At this point, I must confess that I no longer recall specifically which of the details I have already mentioned was bothering him.106 Naturally, I answered: “Why, simply because Bugnini had assured us that you absolutely wished it.” His reaction was instantaneous: “Can this be? He told me himself that you were unanimous on this!”
― Louis Bouyer, The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After

“You’ll have some idea of the deplorable conditions in which this hasty reform was expedited when I recount how the second Eucharistic prayer was cobbled together.87 Between the indiscriminately archeologizing88 fanatics who wanted to banish the Sanctus and the intercessions from the Eucharistic prayer by taking Hippolytus’s Eucharist as is,89 and those others who couldn’t have cared less about his alleged Apostolic Tradition and wanted a slapdash Mass, Dom Botte and I were commissioned to patch up its text with a view to inserting these elements, which are certainly quite ancient—by the next morning”
― Louis Bouyer, The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After

“What then is to be expected from simple local councils, not to say anything of episcopal conferences regularly manipulated by more or less irresponsible offices, or of assemblies of so-called “experts,” or of any other such commission!”
― Louis Bouyer, The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After

“In the best-case scenario, that of a truly ecumenical council in the traditional meaning of the term, i.e. actually representative of an undivided Christendom, the most that divine assistance can ensure for the Apostles’ successors is the absence of any possible error in the doctrinal definitions such assemblies venture to produce. But, short of this extreme case, any dosage of approximation, insufficiency, or simple superficiality are to be expected from even so sacrosanct an assembly.”
― Louis Bouyer, The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After

“What these diverse experiences, to which were added that in the International Commission of Theologians founded by Paul VI,45 after the Council, and above all that in the Consilium for the reform of the liturgical books,46 have most firmly impressed upon me is the truth of Newman’s quip on the inability of committees in general to produce anything of value.”
― Louis Bouyer, The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After

“The most recent Council, however, has cured me of my illusions that the royal path to achieve it might be this “conciliarity.”
― Louis Bouyer, The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After

“It is a fact too little known, but as far as I am concerned undeniable, that Providence has a great sense of humor, and of course, the best!”
― Louis Bouyer, The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After