Catholic Fiction

Civilization—and by this I do not mean talking cinemas and tinned food, nor even surgery and hygienic houses, but the whole moral and artistic organization of Europe—has not in itself the power of survival. It came into being through Christianity, and without it has not significance or power to command allegiance. This loss of faith in Christianity and the consequential loss of confidence in moral and social standards have become embodied in the ideal of a materialistic, mechanized state, already existent in Russia and rapidly spreading wouth and west. It is no longer possible, as it was in the time of Gibbon, to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis on which it rests. As the issues become clearer the polite skeptic and with him that purely fictitious figure, the happy hedonist, will disappear. — Evelyn Waugh, 1930 Daily Express article