The Catholic World Report has posted an article surveying Evelyn Waugh’s works from a Roman Catholic perspective. This is by Prof. Adam A.J. DeVille, St. Francis University, Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and is written on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Waugh’s death next week. The article includes a quote from what is probably Waugh’s least read book, Robbery Under Law and continues with a discussion of how Waugh was affected by the Vatican II Council. Prof. DeVille concludes:
In this Franciscan era, when we seem buffeted indeed by fashionable notions and airborne nostrums every other week, Waugh provides us with a handy, steadying heuristic amidst the chaos unleashed by churchmen over the last fifty years. When that chaos tempts Catholics to despair, Waugh’s writings remain, an abiding source of diverting delight, the splendid and often hilarious prose elevating our spirits and edifying our minds.
NOTE (11 April 2016): If you liked this post, you might want to know that Prof. DeVille has also posted a “second and longer” essay about Waugh’s books here. He is interested in Eastern Orthodoxy as well as Roman Catholicism and notes Waugh’s interaction with Orthodoxy in Abyssinia and Yugoslavia at the beginning of the essay. He then warns, however, that there may not be much more on that topic to follow. The “longer” essay is entitled “Eternal Memory Indeed” which is the roughly the Orthodox equivalent of Requiescat in Pace.
