Question for those who have read the book

Elisabet, I've read the book twice -- just finished it last week -- and like you I didn't see the clues to Charles' conversion to Catholicism (like Waugh's). Because I'm leading a discussion on this book next month, I've been reading sites online and over and over again critics have talked about his conversion. What? But the novel CAN be read that way, that Charles was caught and tugged by the twitch on the thread.

This is from one of the online sites:

Surprise! Charles is now a Catholic. Did you notice? If not, don’t worry, because we only get two small clues that Charles has converted by the time he’s in the army in the 1940s. The first hint actually comes in the prologue, when an army man named Hooper tells Charles of their new lodgings at Brideshead: "There's a sort of R.C. church attached. I looked in and there was a kind of service going on – just a padre and one old man. I felt very awkward. More in your line than mine." "R.C." means "Roman Catholic," and Hooper’s comment that it’s "more in [Charles’s] line than [his]" is the clue we’re talking about. (We know, it’s subtle, but it’s there.)

The second comes in the epilogue, and is part of this big ending we’re trying to talk about here. Charles enters the chapel and "sa[ys] a prayer, an ancient, newly learned form of words." The "newly learned" bit is our second clue and confirms that Charles has in fact recently converted. This is the twitch upon the thread we’ve been waiting for. We know that Charles was raised in religion ("I was taken to church weekly as a child" he earlier confessed), so his newfound Catholicism is actually a return to God.

Despite appearances, this conversion doesn’t come out of the clear blue sky. It has its roots in Lord Marchmain’s death scene, when Charles watches the old man and "suddenly [feels] the longing for a sign, if only of courtesy, if only for the sake of the woman [he] love[s], who [kneels] […] praying […] for a sign." To Charles, "it seem[s] so small a thing that was asked, the bare acknowledgment of a present, a nod in the crowd." This is where Charles first drops his anti-religion stance and begins to suspect the presence of a God.