Fine new edition of Bouyer's Christian Initiation

Our friends at Cluny Media continue to impress with their reprints of old out-of-print Catholic classics. Whatever you may think about this or that element of Louis Bouyer's writings, he was a major theologian of the 20th century, of a stature that almost no one can compare to today; he had a commitment to traditional theological principles, on the basis of which he eventually came to regret some of the progressive ideas he espoused as a younger scholar; and he did penance for his involvement with the Consilium by telling the world in his Memoirs about the mendacity of its leader and the incompetence of many of its members. 

This book, Christian Initiation, is an eloquent and penetrating little book, an interesting combination of apologetics and mystagogy. Here is a summary , courtesy of the publisher.

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Louis Bouyer (1913–2004) was a member of the French Oratory and one of the most respected and visionary Catholic scholars and theologians of his time. Formerly a Lutheran minister, Bouyer entered the Catholic Church in 1939. A visionary Catholic scholar and theologian, Bouyer was peer and friend of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Joseph Ratzinger as well as T. S. Eliot and J. R. R. Tolkien.

Reprint of old classic on prayer by Msgr Fenton

Monsignor Joseph Clifford Fenton (1906–1969), a professor of fundamental and dogmatic theology at the Catholic University of America and editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review, was one of the twentieth century’s foremost theologians. His work is particularly notable for its total fidelity to sound Catholic principles: inerrant Sacred Scripture, apostolic and ecclesiastical Tradition, and the consistent Roman Magisterium.

His 1939 text The Theology of Prayer has been re-published in a beautiful newly typeset and designed edition from Cluny Media. (Cluny last year released a collection of Monsignor Fenton’s essays, edited by Christian D. Washburn, which was reviewed here on Rorate Caeli by Christopher Malloy).

The Theology of Prayer distills the teachings of Thomas Aquinas, Thomas a Vallgornera, and Joseph a Spiritu Sancto, among other great scholastic theologians, on the nature of Christian prayer. The writings of those theologians hold such treasures on praying effectively that their loss would be a tragedy for the people of God. In these pages, Monsignor Fenton clearly and concisely presents to the contemporary reader the scholastics’ works and their penetrating insights into Sacred Scripture and Catholic Tradition. With The Theology of Prayer, Fenton revitalizes the work of those theologians, preserving their insights and presenting plainly what God has revealed about prayer and how the Church has preserved and expounded that revelation for the good and the salvation of all who believe.