trickled out of his severed oesophagus. Only whennhe tried to fly away did he grasp the dreadful thingnthat had happened to him. It is the same withnmodern man. The thing that has been cut away isnhis soul, and there was a period—twenty years,nperhaps—during which he did not notice it.nAfter such definihon one would say that it was tragic fornmodern man to have his soul cut away, very much as it wasnfatal for the wasp to be cut in two. Orwell’s commentarynsounds more like a strong applause after a great scene: “Itnwas absolutely necessary that the soul should be cut away.”nOne may always excuse him by saying that he was notncondemning religious belief in another life but religiousnhypocrisy in this life. Yet, he could have easily distinguishednone from the other in order to give man andnreligion their due.nAccording to Orwell, religion is gone, and it is not goingnto return. I was not surprised to read that Orwell enjoyednHilaire Belloc’s The Servile State, and I suspect he maynhave had it in mind while writing his own vision of thenfuture. Belloc’s book, wrote Orwell, “foretold with astonishingnaccuracy the things that are happening right now.” Thensurprise came when he added: “Unfortunately he had nonremedy to offer.” Now, every reader of that book knows thatnBelloc did offer a remedy. It was, at least in part, a return tonthe full living of the Christian faith that had shaped Europenand Western civilization. For Orwell, religion, and especiallynthe Catholic faith, is no remedy at all. It is somethingnlost; or even better, something that had to be removed fromnmodern times as a tumor is removed from the body. “ThenKingdom of God, old style, has definitely failed; but on thenother hand, ‘Marxist realism’ has also failed, whatever itnmay achieve materially.”nOrwell, as so many others before him, was wrong aboutnthe future of religion, the Judeo-Christian tradition, and thenCatholic church. In only 20 years we, and Harvey Cox,ntoo, have gone from “The Secular City” to “Sorry, InShould Have Said: Religion in the Secular City.”nEvelyn Waugh was one of the first readers to realize whatnwas wrong with Orwell’s novel and, after finishing thisndepressing book, thought that his friend deserved a sermon:nThe book failed to make my flesh creep asnpresumably you intended. For one thing I thinknyour metaphysics are wrong. You deny the soul’snexistence (at least Winston does) and can onlyncontrast matter with reason and will. It is nownapparent that matter can control reason and willnunder certain conditions. So you are left withnnothing but matter. … I think it possible that inn1984 we shall be living in conditions rather likenthose you show. But what makes your versionnspurious to me is the disappearance of the Church.nI wrote of you once that you seemed unaware of itsnexistence now when it is everywhere manifest.nDisregard all the supernatural implications if younlike, but you must admit its unique character as ansocial & historical institution. I believe it isninextinguishable, though of course it can benextinguished in a certain place for a certain time.nEven that is rarer than you might think.n”One cannot be really a Catholic & grown-up,” wrotenOrwell among his notes for an essay that he was preparingnon, precisely, Evelyn Waugh. These few words were hisncommentary on Lord Marchmain’s religious conversion atnthe end of Brideshead Revisited.nBias blinded Orwell to any possibility of the Church’snsurvival. The revival of religion, at the very least as anpowerful factor in the cause of freedom and human dignity,nwould have left him stunned: Poland, the Philippines,nCentral America. . . . Had Orwell lived another 30 years,nwould he have written Homage to Poland? In that country,nhe would have seen a people whose heroic struggle fornfreedom and justice is largely sustained by the Creed of thenCatholic Church. Perhaps Orwell would have had tonremember what Evelyn Waugh said in his letter: “Men whonlove a crucified God need never think of torture asnall-powerful.”nIn 1932, reviewing Karl Adam’s classic The Spirit ofnCatholicism, Orwell noticed that “very few people, apartnfrom Catholics themselves, seem to have grasped that thenChurch is to be taken seriously.” Well, he did not take itnvery seriously, and as many others before and after him,nOrwell buried the Church and the faith all too hastily. Henfailed to understand the most obvious lesson of its amazingnhistory: that the Catholic Church seems to leave thencemetery just when its undertakers engrave its name on thentombstone.nIt is true that there is no belief in the immortality of thensoul, no supernatural faith, and no Church in the Orwelliannworld. But profound and universal religious beliefncontinues to exist in the real world, in what is called ansecularized world and that resembles more than we arenwilling to admit the features of Orwell’s nightmare. It hasnnot ceased to exist even in those totalitarian regimes wherenlong ago its extermination was decreed. It may be buried,nbut it is not dead. It may be underground, but for all wenknow, enriching the soil for a new resurrection.nnnDECEMBER 1986 /19n