[Joe 6-pack]

"Today we can see it on all sides as the active negation of all that Western culture has stood for. 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 no significance or power to command allegiance. The loss of faith in Christianity and the consequential lack of confidence in moral and social standards have become embodied in the ideal of a materialistic, mechanized state . . . It is no longer possible . . . to accept the benefits of civilization and at the same time deny the supernatural basis upon which it rests."

- Evelyn Waugh

[Mach9]

Reminds me of the last few paragraphs of Brideshead. Something like the single lamp left in the [chapel’s] window guiding the crusaders home. But the passage you cite describes the entire notion of modern “art,” banal, venal, mindless precisely because of the absence of God.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

Waugh anticipated post-Christian Europe, which could be the theme of “Brideshead Revisited,” one of my favorite TV dramas.