The Latin Letters of CS Lewis Author:C.S. Lewis, Giovanni Calabria In September 1947, after reading C.S. Lewis?s The Screwtape Letters in Italian, Fr. Giovanni Calabria was moved to write the author, but he knew no English and assumed (rightly) that Lewis knew no Italian. So he wrote his letter in Latin, hoping that, as a classicist, Lewis would know Latin. Therein began a correspondence that was to outl... more »ive Fr. Calabria himself (he died in December 1954, and was succeeded in correspondence by Fr. Luigi Pedrollo).Translator/editor Martin Moynihan calls these letters "limpid, fluent and deeply refreshing. There was a charm about them, too, and not least in the way they were 'topped and tailed' ? that is, in their ever-slightly-varied formalities of address and of farewell."More than any other of his published works The Latin Letters shows the strong devotional side of Lewis, and contains letters ranging from Christian unity and modern European history to liturgical worship and general ethical behavior.Moreover, these letters are often intimate and personal: I know that you will pour out your prayers both for my most dearly longed-for wife and also for me who ? now bereaved and as it were halved ? journey on, through this Vale of Tears, alone.
LETTER 34 "If someone had told me that there existed a long correspondence between C.S. Lewis and a saint . . . and that it was about ecumenism and reunion between Protestants and Catholics. I would think they were pulling my leg. It sounds too good to be true. Yet here it is: a graceful, intimate, hopeful, wise, saintly, committed, uncompromising, mutually respectful, and utterly practical ongoing dialog between a Catholic saint and the greatest Protestant writer of all time. . . . It contains many new gems of Lewis wisdom for the reader to underline, quote, and share. This is a very precious little book, and a strikingly relevant one for both Protestants and Catholics, for it is a model of ecumenical dialog. If your hopes for reunion are flagging, please read this book." ? Peter Kreeft« less