Born into a Protestant family, Louis Bouyer, after a receiving a degree from the Sorbonne, studied theology with the Protestant faculties of Paris and then Strasbourg. He was ordained a Lutheran minister in 1936 and served as vicar of the Lutheran parish of the Trinity in Paris until World War II. In 1939, the study of the christology and ecclesiology of St. Athanasius of Alexandria led Bouyer to the Catholic Church._x000D_

Received into the Catholic Church in the Abbey of Saint-Wandrille (Seine-Maritime) in 1944, he entered the congregation of the priests of the Oratory, and remained with them the rest of his life. He was a professor at the Catholic Institute of Paris until 1963 and then taught in England, Spain, and the United States. In 1969 he wrote the book The Decomposition of Catholicism, which presented what he saw as the liturgical and dogmatic problems in the Church._x000D_

Twice appointed by the pope to the International Theological Commission, he was a consultant at the Second Vatican Council for the liturgy, the Congregation of Sacred Rites and Secretariat for Christian Unity. In 1999 he received the Cardinal-Grente prize of the French Academy for all his work. He died 22 October 2004 in Paris, a victim for many years of Alzheimer's. He was buried in the cemetery of the Abbey of Saint-Wandrille.