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"In order to remake itself, Catholic theology will require the environment recreated by a culture in which the sympathetic objectivity made [possible] by the best of the human sciences is allied with an art and a poetry that will rediscover, beyond the clear consciousness [(la conscience claire)] of Descartes and the empty consciousness [(la conscience vide)] of Kant, the mysterious depths of the whole consciousness [(la conscience totale)]. But neither the one nor the other will be possible outside of a tradition renewed by life in the faith. And that, we well know, cannot be rejuvenated and transmitted anew unless we resubmit ourselves [(nous remettions)] to the school of Christian ascesis, [an ascesis] required by the aspiration after the parousia, [an ascesis] such as [that] ancient monasticism received from primitive Christianity and adapted [for the] first time to the contemporary necessities of a world in perpetual transformation."
Louis Bouyer, Religieux et clercs contre Dieu (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1975), 42. This forms an inclusio with the comments on "l'humanisme du Golgatha" that "crowns" and positively "regenerates" "l'humanisme de l'Acropole" (pp. 32-33) at the start of the long but rapidly sketched history of decline and failed reformation begun on pp. 30-33. Interestingly, the history sketched by this convert from French Lutheranism seems remarkably Protestant. For Bouyer is (after the early church) pretty critical of all but the 16th-century Catholic (and humanistic) reformers Erasmus and More, and their disciples (first full paragraph on p. 39). But was Erasmus and ascetic?
"Were [Tolstoy]'s ethical principles so pure that they could not be put to bad use? Or was his ideology 'an act of violence against ordinary human nature,' almost identical with Bolshevism in its desire to remake people and build paradise on earth? Could Tolstoyanism indeed have been an inspiration for the cruellest investigators of Stalin's NKVD?
"Alyosha's account of this debate is intercut with childhood memories of a neighbor, Semyon Kochin, a survivor of Stalin's camps, expert in Tolstoy's life and thought, 'who in 1936 passed through the hands of just such an investigator in Moscow's Lefortovo Prison.' Kochin, a wise and eccentric recluse (who also seeks to prolong his life through writing), becomes the fourth subject of Alyosha's Memorial Book. 'In general,' Kochin says in a grave paradox, 'those who feel the imperfections of this world most keenly are disinclined to set much store by the lives of others.' Tolstoy was torn between his beliefs and the bonds of family love. He was 'a very good man,' Kochin would say, but his renunciation of his wife and children in favor of a set of ideas was evil."
Rachel Polonsky, "Highly magical history," a review of Before and during, by Vladimir Sharov, trans. Oliver Ready, New York review of books 62, no. 12 (July 9, 2015): 72 (71-74).
Polonsky closes her review with the words of Vyacheslav Molotov: "When asked why terror had been necessary, he replied, 'We do not have ready-made pure people, purged of all sins'" (Molotov remembers: inside Kremlin politics—Conversations with Felix Chuev, ed. Albert Resis (Ivan R. Dee, 1993), pp. 63 and 255).
In between these two quotations is more along these lines.
"The name 'Barth' in the revisionist statements above does not refer to the actually existing textual Barth. It refers, rather, to the rationalistically deduced Barth. Only the deduced Barth teaches that there is no Trinity prior to election."
George Hunsinger, Reading Barth with charity: a hermeneutical proposal (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015), 79. "It is my hope that the book might be of some value for students of Barth even after revisionism vanishes from the scene (as it will). Revisionism is of little interest in its own right. It claims attention mainly as an example of how not to read Karl Barth. If only the revisionists would cease ascribing their views to Barth, they would have nothing to fear from his more careful readers" (115).
"Once again, at this point, we must speak plainly: there is practically no liturgy worthy of the name today in the Catholic Church. Yesterday's liturgy was hardly more than an embalmed cadaver. What people call liturgy today is little more than this same cadaver decomposed."
Louis Bouyer, The decomposition of Catholicism, trans. Charles Underhill Quinn (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1969 [1968]), 105.
"There is no 'salvation without the Gospel,' no 'anonymous Christianity,' no 'implicit Church.' These are so many chimeras that worn-out Christians have invented to dispense themselves from working at a task that they are obliged to perform even though they think they have lost the means to do so.
"For the world to be saved, in the evangelical sense of the word, we have first to believe that it needs to be. We must then believe not that we have the means but that God has them, since through no merit of our own he revealed them to us, and that he has entrusted them to us."
Louis Bouyer, The decomposition of Catholicism, trans. Charles Underhill Quinn (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1969 [1968]), 99-100.
"If the good priests who still believe in God and Jesus Christ, and do not have a mistress are all integralists, what good Catholics would not want to close ranks behind them?"
Louis Bouyer, on the "integralism" of the Lefebvrists. The decomposition of Catholicism, trans. Charles Underhill Quinn (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1969 [1968]), 51-52.
"In order to remake itself, Catholic theology will require the environment recreated by a culture in which the sympathetic objectivity made [possible] by the best of the human sciences is allied with an art and a poetry that will rediscover, beyond the clear consciousness [(la conscience claire)] of Descartes and the empty consciousness [(la conscience vide)] of Kant, the mysterious depths of the whole consciousness [(la conscience totale)]. But neither the one nor the other will be possible outside of a tradition renewed by life in the faith. And that, we well know, cannot be rejuvenated and transmitted anew unless we resubmit ourselves [(nous remettions)] to the school of Christian ascesis, [an ascesis] required by the aspiration after the parousia, [an ascesis] such as [that] ancient monasticism received from primitive Christianity and adapted [for the] first time to the contemporary necessities of a world in perpetual transformation."
