The ongoing publication of the works of Robert Crouse is a welcome (perhaps urgent) invitation to encounter one of great theological minds of the past half century. For those who knew him, they are also a reminder of his unmatched capacity for clarity and wisdom in the context of what Crouse himself recognized as the perennial apocalypse of world history, recently alluded to in Eucharistic lections for the season of Advent with their end-of-the world anticipations: ‘The signs are always propitious, it seems’ writes Crouse in a sermon for The Second Sunday in Advent, ‘[d]istress of nations, with perplexity, and fearful hearts. These are no uncommon experiences; they are our daily diet’.1R. D. Crouse, The Soul’s Pilgrimage Volume 1: From Advent to Pentecost (Darton, Longman, and Todd, 2023), p 52.
I first encountered Robert Crouse in 1994, while a student in Canada’s first Great Books programme, the Foundation Year at the University of King’s College. Subsequently, as a young Christian seeking a golden thread to lead me from the early