Lawrence's own plot summary of the book:

It follows this idea: a woman of character and refinement goes into the lower class, and has no satisfaction in her own life. She has had a passion for her husband, so her children are born of passion, and have heaps of vitality. But as her sons grow up she selects them as lovers — first the eldest, then the second. These sons are urged into life by their reciprocal love of their mother — urged on and on. But when they come to manhood, they can't love, because their mother is the strongest power in their lives, and holds them. It's rather like Goethe and his mother and Frau von Stein and Christiana — As soon as the young men come into contact with women, there's a split. William gives his sex to a fribble, and his mother holds his soul. But the split kills him, because he doesn't know where he is. The next son gets a woman who fights for his soul – fights his mother. The son loves his mother – all the sons hate and are jealous of the father. The battle goes on between the mother and the girl, with the son as object. The mother gradually proves stronger, because of the ties of blood. The son decides to leave his soul in his mother's hands, and, like his elder brother go for passion. He gets passion. Then the split begins to tell again. But, almost unconsciously, the mother realises what is the matter, and begins to die. The son casts off his mistress, attends to his mother dying. He is left in the end naked of everything, with the drift towards death.

I'm not even sure that Lawrence is so much out to get a specifically Christian (much less Catholic) version of sexuality as he is out to get a "Modern" version of sexuality. This is plain in Lady Chatterley. The core characters struggle with broadly secular ideas of what sexuality is about and find them lacking. The most decisive verdict Lawrence might have on a more Christian mode of sexuality is to be found in his treatment of the character Miriam Leivers, but I think Dennehy is insufficiently sympathetic to see it through. After all, Lawrence is constantly looking backwards to an English era that is thoroughly Christian.  I suspect that Lawrence's idea is more that Christianity is unrecoverable, not that it is rawly life-denying. After all, so too is secular modernity. Though I suspect he shares Nietzsche's suspicion of Christianity.

Also, I object to story being told: Manichaeism -> Platonism -> Augustinianism -> deformed Christianity.

Platonism just like Christianity resisted very fiercely the dualism that manifests in Manichaeism: Philosophy is for the ancients after all, a self-discipline and a preparation for death. But this vulnerability to dualism is shared between the traditions. Gnosticism came *early* for Christianity and all early Christology and many of the early Church doctrines are dedicated to dealing with it. Both the story of Jesus and Paul's ideas are easily readable in that direction especially for the Greco-Roman mind. It's not as if that danger had to *wait* for Agustine.

Alexander wrote:

I'm not sure why that line of thought is inappropriate: the fact that "figures find religion always too restrictive at various points" doesn't stop one from correctly identifying the particular presentation of doctrine against which a particular figure was reacting.

Having read Lawrence, I doubt it's properly identifiable in particular to what he is reacting. He seems to be reacting, yes, or seeking expression, but it's not so easy to put a name on what he is reacting to and what he is seeking expression to. Modernists are like this and postmodernists are even more like this. Good if someone is occasionally able to appreciate the esthetics of it at least.