Orwell vs God

Robert Gray

11 June 2011

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A very Christian atheist

No one will be amazed that George Orwell disliked Roman Catholicism; it is odd, though, that he seemed unable to leave the subject alone. Even his left-wing cronies found this obsession tedious. The Marxist journalist Jon Kimche, who shared a flat with him in the mid-1930s, complained that his conversation amounted to little more than a series of diatribes against Rome. In print, Orwell might show some forbearance towards socially concerned Catholics such as Jacques Maritain and Georges Bernanos, or towards an apologist such as Frank Sheed, whom he considered exceptionally fair-minded. Even this tolerance, however, was in notably short supply.

Clearly, by all the canons of amateur psychology, the fellow did protest too much. Curiously, though, Orwell never showed any interest in arguing about doctrinal detail, almost as though he understood the necessity of an act of faith. What did outrage his flinty integrity was that so many intellectual Catholics hardly seemed to believe in their own creed. ‘If you talk to a thoughtful Christian, Catholic or Anglican,’ he wrote in 1944, ‘you often find yourself laughed at for being so ignorant as to suppose that anyone ever took the doctrines of the Catholic Church literally... [Those] who cling to the letter of the Creeds while reading into them meanings they were never meant to have, and who snigger at anyone simple enough to believe that the Fathers of the Church meant what they said, are simply raising smokescreens to conceal their own disbelief from themselves.’

Similarly, in his review of Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter (1948), Orwell observed that among certain clever Catholics, the idea had taken root that there was something rather distingué about being damned. ‘When people really believed in Hell,’ he witheringly concluded, ‘they were not so fond of striking graceful attitudes on its brink.’

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Tminusfun

June 13th, 2011 10:58am Report this comment

Robert Gray reaches too far when he tries to compare Orwell's quote on sainthood to the passage in the Gospel. Selflessness as described in John a pillar of sainthood, whereas Orwell seems to describe some sort of overly-romanticized loyalty that is unable to commit to a higher spiritual dimension.

Joe

June 14th, 2011 6:04am Report this comment

In his November 1941 "London Letter to Partisan Review" George Orwell wrote an entire section on "The Catholics" of Britain during WWII. Read it here:
http://georgeorwellnovels.com/journalism/london-letter-to-partisan-review-november-december-1941/

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