In a pivotal scene in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited, the agnostic narrator and main character Charles Ryder interrogates his friend Sebastian Flyte about the latter’s Catholic faith. Charles is incredulous about the religion to which the Flyte family subscribes and the peculiar ways that various of them respectively assent to it.

“I suppose they try and make you believe an awful lot of nonsense?” asks Charles.

“Is it nonsense?” responds Sebastian. “I wish it were. It sometimes sounds terribly sensible to me.”