Can anyone provide me with proof that Evelyn Waugh is in heaven? It'd make me feel a helluva lot better.
There's something oddly comfortable, reading about a guy like Waugh. Joseph Epstein is a fan of Waugh's and wrote some admiring, though candid, biographical material about him back in the 1980s. I especially sympathized with this Waughian quote about his unkind demeanor:
You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being.
Amen, brother, amen.
In the same vein, Waugh disliked the boisterously-drunk poet Dylan Thomas, nothing that Thomas is "exactly what I would have been, if I had not become a Catholic."
Waugh also made an observation about the distinction between Protestant worship and Catholic worship that rings true with me: "The Protestant attitude seems often to be, 'I am good; therefore I go to church,' while the Catholic's is, 'I am very far from good; therefore I go to church."
Again, amen (though I speak for myself, not my Protestant brethren). The quote, obviously, is closely intertwined with the first quote above. Waugh appears to have understood much of what the average Catholic is oblivious to. Perhaps we should teach Waugh more in CCD classes. His words would give students a good theological and moral outlook, but his life would help keep them from getting too discouraged when they don't live up to it.
