I really like this book and while not catholic I'm close enough that the experiences and decisions of the characters are comprehensible to me, which probably helps.

The article mentions this briefly but many don't, and they downplay it significantly even here. The first act of this book is extremely homoerotic. Like it is a clear depiction of a chaste but certainly romantic love between these two young men. But it is also a friendship based on normal-for-the-time-and-place male camaraderie and college antics.

It's a nuanced and sophisticated depiction, not apparently trying to make any moral or ethical point about it and the book has a small but devoted following among contemporary gay men for this. Nor is this even plausibly deniable as a "sappho and her friend" type accident on the author's part, since homosexuality is pretty explicitly (though euphemistically) referenced elsewhere in the book. IMO one of the best depictions of a romance of its kind in modern literature. It's fascinating that it's here.

Liberties is a great journal. It covers a lot of intellectual ground and is unapologetically Liberal in all senses of the word. Every issue has political and historical commentary, art (literary, film, dance) criticism, and poetry. It’s like a denser Harper’s.

> Why, oh why, must the love stories fail?

Well, Julia's (and then Charles's) love for God prevails, in the end.

On the face of it, it's not a story where the guy gets the girl, as such. However, there is a sense where Jesus is the bridegroom of the Church, and thus it is that kind of story, just not the way that readers expect (well, as Oliver points out, until they read the title of the section "The Twitch on the Thread").

How unexpected - beautifully written! It's almost surprising that the quoted passages are so familiar - I hadn't realised how affecting they are. Whilst loving the book I can't consider Brideshead Revisited without thinking of the wonderful 1980s Granada TV adaptation. I didn't dare watch the more recent film, lest it spoil the tableaux of the original.

Waugh's journey from satire to orthodoxy mirrors many tech careers—from disruptive iconoclasm to seeking deeper principles. His ability to maintain literary excellence while embracing traditionalism reminds us that technical maturity often involves integrating seemingly contradictory values rather than merely overturning established systems.

His journey doesn’t really follow that pattern though. The Loved One, a deeply iconoclastic satirical novel came after Brideshead.

What of it? The Loved One (1948) was a bit of a squib at best, tonally a throwback to the earlier Waugh. It’s not very good (imho) so you can see why Terry Southern - who had not much taste - liked it enough to make a film of it, also unsuccessful.

The Sword of Honour Trilogy written over the next decade or so is much more representative of the later Waugh: the original article has sketched him out correctly.

The general continuity in Waugh’s life and writing is contempt for modernity: a turn to religion makes perfect sense in that light.

The diaries are worth reading too. He really was quite an unpleasant fellow, as well as a fine writer.

> The general continuity in Waugh’s life and writing is contempt for modernity: a turn to religion makes perfect sense in that light.

I'm christian and this describes the most troublesome converts. Both in the trouble they cause the rest of us and the trouble they experience themselves.

The thing they miss, and also maybe you, and also probably Waugh, is that religions are in one sense much older but in another much more serious and experiential sense they are modern.

They are practiced by modern people, with modern patterns of thought, navigating modern problems in modern ways. The wisdom may be ancient but your life isn't, your belief isn't. You can't go home again, you can't swim in the same river twice, you can't prevent the fall, you can't put the family back together, you can't practice the religion of st anthony or even of your great grandfather. A modern person can only practice a modern christianity and this includes catholicism.

Now, I still think you are right about waugh there. He did have contempt for modernity and did probably turn to catholicism to escape it. But I don't believe he found what he was looking for, because it simply isn't there to be found.

Charles Taylor explores this problem/contradiction/experience in incredible depth in A Secular Age. I wish waugh had been able to read it but I wonder if he would have.

I'm responding a bit late to this.

The objection to your point is that the teachings of Christianity are timeless if true. And therefore so is (the object of) Christians' belief. And so therefore, a 'modern Christianity' is an oxymoron.

I happily claim to practise the religion of St. Anthony, since our intellects adhere to the same thing (God's Self-Revelation in the God-Man Jesus Christ), and our wills pursue the same thing (Union with the Divine Nature). The reason for belief and the goal of religious practice is the same in St. Anthony's case as in mien.

As for Waugh, he believed that 'modernity', taken to mean the beliefs that inform contemporary thought and behaviour, was contemptible. (Obviously, if we took 'modern' to simply mean 'contemporary', this would make no sense. 'Modern' is a notoriously ambiguous word.)

> The objection to your point is that the teachings of Christianity are timeless if true.

"The teachings of Christianity" are, in fact, not consistent across time or across subsets of Christianity at the same time, and for any given time and group of Christians tend to include a mix of teachings that are held by those Christians to be fundamental and eternal, and teachings that are held by those Christians to be applicable in the current context (the latter tend to be presented as an application of the former to the perceived current circumstances, but may or may not be the result of applying any rational process to explicitly held eternal beliefs to any specifically articulated beliefs about the modern world.)

Your objection seems to be grounded in claims about the "teachings of Christianity" that are empirically untrue of the actual teachings of actual Christianity as it has actually existed in the material world. They may apply to some abstract ideal of Christianity, but in that case a "modern Christianity" could still exist as a concrete Christianity that more closely approached the abstract ideal than current concrete forms.

That's fair. Let's replace 'Christianity' with 'the Catholic Church', since what you say undoubtedly applies to Protestantism, and in a less obvious way to Eastern Orthodoxy. And remember, I'm saying 'timeless if true'; the 'true' part is assumed for the purpose of this argument.

As someone who has been Catholic most of my life, it certainly applies just as much to the Catholic Church (even to there being diverse beliefs within the Church at any given time, and certainly to change over time.)

Catholicism teaches that Divine Revelation is God's Self-Revelation and therefore can't change because God can't change. Again, if it changes, then it isn't true. I'm not (here) arguing that it's true; only that in order to adhere to it, one must hold that it doesn't change. That, obviously, doesn't imply that every member of the Catholic Church believes the same thing. Nor does it imply that practice will look different in various times and places, although practice will always have the same goal (Union with the Divine Essence) and therefore be in essence the same thing.

EDIT: "will look different" should obviously be "will not look different"

> Catholicism teaches that Divine Revelation is God's Self-Revelation and therefore can't change because God can't change.

The "God can't change" part seems a bit above our paygrade, no?

Not to mention: Who are we to say that God wouldn't reveal things to us gradually — and maybe in a changing way?

EXAMPLE: We still teach our kids that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Later, we refine the teachings.

> Catholicism teaches that Divine Revelation is God's Self-Revelation and therefore can't change

Revelation may not change, but the actual concrete beliefs of the Catholic Church manifestly do.

> Again, if it changes, then it isn't true.

If it changes, and it was claimed to be a universal constant, than either the before- or after-change version isn't true, sure, that's trivially true.

I said

>> The objection to your point is that the teachings of Christianity are timeless if true.

To which you said

> "The teachings of Christianity" are, in fact, not consistent across time or across subsets of Christianity at the same time

> Revelation may not change, but the actual concrete beliefs of the Catholic Church manifestly do.

The teaching of the Catholic Church just is revelation. Individual Catholics or churchmen may believe all kinds of things, some contrary to revelation and/or each other, but that's something distinct. What has manifestly changed?

> The teaching of the Catholic Church just is revelation.

No, even in the view of the official teachings of the Catholic Church, the teachings of the Catholic Church include, but extend well beyond, revelation.

If the teachings were only what was understood to be unquestionably part of the content of revelation, then there would be no teachings which were not dogmas.

Yes, that was a bad way of putting things on my part. You are correct. Better would be "the basis of the Catholic Church's teaching, and the primary part of its teaching, is revelation".

To return to the main disagreement:

>> The objection to your point is that the teachings of Christianity are timeless if true.

> "The teachings of Christianity" are, in fact, not consistent across time or across subsets of Christianity at the same time

The teaching of the Catholic Church, insofar as it is proposed as being part of Revelation, or as following logically therefrom, is timeless and unchanging. One reason is that Revelation is primarily about God (it's His Self-Revelation), who can't change.

Again, the fact that different Catholics believe different things (contrary to Revelation or each other), or that some teachings that are not proposed as being part of Revelation change over time, is irrelevant to this.

Obviously, if you claim Revelation is an "abstract ideal", then you are implicitly claiming it's false, or doesn't exist, which is an entirely different argument.

Are there any teachings that are proposed as part of Revelation, or as following logically therefrom, that have manifestly changed over time?

> I happily claim to practise the religion of St. Anthony, since our intellects adhere to the same thing

Well, and me too. But also you should read the book I mentioned. I'm not qualified to summarize it but others have. It has been extremely valuable to my spiritual life.

Thanks. I've heard good things about Taylor and I will try to check it out one of these days.

Thank you. I will explore.

Paul Fussell (I think) said that one should read Waugh's letters rather than his diaries: he wrote the letters in the morning, sober, and wrote the diaries at night, drunk.

The movie is pretty good too. Jonathon Winters in a dual row.

Oh God no, that movie is a horrid mess. It’s why Waugh’s novels were never adapted by Hollywood studios after that.