Liturgical Piety by Louis Bouyer (review)

274 BOOK REVIEWS idealists who would abolish the veto do not understand. This insight is that the world community is not sufficiently integrated to permit a majority to be victorious over a minority in the councils of the nations. For in that case the minority, having the power and the inclination, would merely challenge the majority by the arbitrament of war." Despite his warnings against relying too much on the power of prediction in the field of history, Niebuhr attempts one himself that has hopeful possibilities. He foresees the possibility that the Communist bloc " would gradually lose its power to challenge the world. . . . Such a loss of historical dynamic is not unprecedented. Mohammedanism was once a dynamic politico-religious movement. It has not ceased to exist, but it now lacks the power to challenge any established unity." Lastly, I think we can all ponder the very wise summing up of America's position in the world community today. "We are in an unusual position, in fact, of having been very reluctant to acknowledge both the power and the responsibilities we now bear. This virtue is of course not a clear gain. For the absence of the lust for power grants no immunity against pride in its possession. We may, in fact, aggravate that pride by the pretension that we do not have it." (Italics added) . The self has a valiant defender and the dramas of history a keen observer in Reinhold Niebuhr. St. Mary's College Notre Dame, Ind. JAMES M. EGAN, 0. P. Liturgical Piety. By Loms BoUYER. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1955. Pp. fl94 with index. $4.75. If it is not immediately evident why such a book such as Liturgical Piety is reviewed here, one need only refer to Father Bouyer's own significant statement: " ... any liturgical renewal is doomed to fail which is not, in its very beginnings, soundly theological." (p. 49) Here is the crying need in our contemporary liturgical movement-the lack of an adequately articulated theology of liturgy. In this first of Notre Dame's new series on liturgical studies the author attempts to fill that lacuna in modern liturgical writing. Unhappily, Liturgical Piety is not the answer to the problem. The book presents a series of more or less integrated chapters, ranging from historical criticism of various periods in liturgical history to historicodoctrinal ventures in the Christian Mystery. After judging Baroque Christianity as the villain responsible for a purely externalistic idea of liturgy, Father Bouyer discusses the Romantic reaction to Baroque, then the '?atristic liturgical ideal. From there he uncovers the Jewish Qehal, " the BOOK REVIEWS 275 assembly of God," as the prototype of the Christian ecclesia and sums up the unity and perfection of the liturgy as "the meeting of God's People called together in convocation by God's Word through the apostolic ministry, in order that the People, consciously united together, may hear God's Word itself in Christ, may adhere to that Word by means of the prayer and praise amid which the Word is proclaimed, and so seal by the Eucharistic sacrifice the Covenant which is accomplished by that same Word." (p. Q9) There follows a section on the modern and contemporary liturgical movements in which the author evaluates the work of Dom Gueranger -as well as that of Abbot Herwegen and Dom Casel of Maria Laach. He shows a preference for the liturgical school of Laach and also praises very highly the work accomplished by Dom Lambert Beaudouin, an unpublicized monk of Mont Cesar, who led Belgium's liturgical revival after the turn of the present century. With liturgical history brought up to date in the first five chapters Father Bouyer turns his attention to the " Catholic tradition concerning the shape of the Eucharist." He then sympathetically presents Dom Odo easel's theory of liturgy and mystery, while denying the positive link made by Das Christliche Kultmysterium between the pagan mystery religions and Christianity. Under the title, " The Pauline Mystery and Its Proclamation : From the Synagogue Service to the Missa Catechumenorum," the meaning and liturgical significance of "God's Word" is then discussed. As final offering in this general Eucharistic section the reader finds...