I want to argue that Waugh could not have been a great satirist were he not a Catholic, and, more controversially, that his satire had its source in appropriation of the truths of Catholicism rather than in extenuation of its precepts. Most fundamentally, it was Catholicism that made “Waugh the insular and class-conscious bully” into an internationalist taking the side of the underdog. His satire was subversive, and deliberately so. It is essential to grasp that his satire subverts the social and political tyrannies of our time.
