Lovers in Marriage Author:Louis Evely Originally published in French as Amour et mariage, translated by John Drury. — Why, at this point, another book abour Christian marriage? Haven't spiritual writers, reflecting the shift toward the positive and the human in recent Catholic theology of marriage, quantitatively (if not qualitatively) made up for their historic attitude of lyric but... more » indisguisable condescension? Isn't it wiser now to let those involved discover their own married Christianity--and not have them set upon by unmarried specialists who haven't been particularly helpful to them in the past. Well, maybe. But there are authors and there are authors--and Louis Evely, the realistic, loving Belgian priest who has almost singlehandedly rescued spiritual writing from the state of pious mediocrity, deserves a hearing if anyone does. His Lovers in Marriage, like all his books, is about a love relationship. It is about marriage as essential creative action of most lives, marriage as the school of love where one promises to kepp himself alive (not just breathing)for the sake of another, marriage as a union one enters into in order to live all of the love of which he is capable. This primacy of love makes Evely's a truly different book with some truly different ruminations: Should the church perhaps sanctify only unions which have proved themselves in time? Aren't children better off in a second marriage than in a dead marriage?... Altogether Lovers in Marriage is a rare book, a felicitous combination of post-concilia theology, Evely understanding, stylistic grace, and common sense.« less