At the Heart of Christian Worship

Cardinal Yves Congar is universally known and respected as the great ecclesiologist of Vatican II whose seminal ideas helped to reconfigure the landscape of Catholic theology following the council. Less well known is his role in contributing far-reaching insights to the emerging liturgical movement in the church. This collection represents several of Congar's decisive contributions. Reading them makes possible a deeper and more cogent reception of the key ideas of the council documents. These texts are at once both erudite and exciting, both essential and pastorally incisive. There has never been a better time to disseminate these critically important liturgical insights than the present moment.

Cardinal Yves Congar, OP, who died in 1995, was a French Dominican widely recognized as one of the most important Roman Catholic theologians of the twentieth century and a major influence upon the theology of the documents of Vatican II. Congar drew from biblical, patristic, and medieval sources to revitalize the discipline of contemporary theology. He was an early advocate of ecumenism and also contributed to shaping the theological agenda of the twentieth-century liturgical movement.

Paul Philibert, OP, is a retired professor of pastoral theology who has taught in the United States and abroad. He is a Dominican friar of the US Southern Province. His 2005 Liturgical Press book, The Priesthood of the Faithful: Key to a Living Church, reflects the theology of these essays of Cardinal Yves Congar. His translation of Congar’s masterpiece, True and False Reform in the Church, will soon be published by Liturgical Press.