Pleasure of Rome

In the spring of 1993, Cardinal Hume was asked by the editor of the Tablet, the Catholic weekly, what was the significance of the several hundred Anglicans who had become Roman Catholics rather than share their church with women priests, He looked out of his window, considering, and answered, "This could be the conversion of England for which we prayed." It is a remark which - properly - haunts him. Had it not been tape recorded, it would never have been published, and he spent some weeks trying to row back from it.

How different things seem now. Many of the Anglican priests who put their trust in the cardinal feel betrayed by how little has been done to accommodate them; many Catholic priests are noticeably resentful that too much has been done to accommodate married Anglicans who - they feel - have converted for the wrong reasons.

The cardinal, according to his advisers, has decided that the conversion of England is not up to him. It may be that the Church of England is falling to bits, riven by contradiction and unholiness, as some of his convert advisers tell him; or it may be they are wrong. Either way, he believes, there is nothing to be gained by haste and aggression. If he were to be seen trying to torpedo a going concern, the resultant backlash could harm the Roman Catholic Church considerably, and if the Church of England does disintegrate and sink, then all he or his successors need do is put out a lifeboat for the survivors. We will hear no more talk about the Conversion of England for a while.

The subtlety, caution and cunning of Cardinal Hume's approach has been extremely important. The contrast with Dr Carey could hardly be greater: the Archbishop of Canterbury always seems to be rushing into the future, shouting encouragement over his shoulder at the angels inexplicably hanging back. The cardinal is much more attractive to thoughtful conservatives. Men such as Charles Moore, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph, and probably the most important of the current wave of converts, turned away from Anglicanism partly because it no longer seemed to take itself seriously. They are trying to construct a principled response to the modern world, and modern Roman Catholicism does preserve a tradition of taking philosophers seriously: that is why the Congregation of Doctrine of Faith keeps sacking them from Catholic universities.

A prominent Catholic journalist once teased Lord Runcie, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, with the thought that all the serious Christian intellectuals in Britain now were Roman Catholics. It is sufficiently close to the truth for Anglicans to be worried. When Runcie was at Oxford, the Church of England could boast CS Lewis, TS Eliot and even Dorothy Sayers as active lay propagandists. It is difficult to think of their equivalents in the modern C of E. Roman Catholics can boast the hugely influential Alasdair MacIntyre (who passed from Belfast Protestantism, through Marxism, to Roman Catholicism) among philosophers, and whole regiments of journalists.

The best of these Catholic journalists, such as Clifford Longley, now of the Telegraph and Tablet, would never dream of deliberately traducing the Church of England in print. But they really cannot see the point of it. To them it has historical causes, which explain why it is here, but no theological integrity to explain why God might want it. Indeed, the only people who talk with any confidence nowadays about God's role in the Church of England are those who see Him playing a destructive part, either by purging it of heresy or by using it to train good Catholic priests.

This may change. The predictions made that thousands of Anglicans would turn to Rome if women were ordained can now be seen as grotesquely overheated. Most of the really vociferous opponents were clergy, and for them and for their families the costs of moving are very high. There is a certain irony in the spectacle of supporters of the "Roman option" flirting with trade unions. Anglican vicars own their jobs - literally: that is why Dr Carey is trying to put them all on contracts. But the powers of a Roman Catholic bishop exceed Dr Carey's wildest dreams: he can send his priests anywhere at any time. This power is tempered by realism and charity, not by law. If an Archbishop of Westminster feels like sending a priest from Soho to Nigeria at 24 hours' notice, he can do it. It has been done.

Meanwhile, there are signs of an intellectual resurgence in the Church of England. The appointment of Richard Chartres, once one of Lord Runcie's speechwriters, as Bishop of London adds real class and unpredictability to the bench of bishops. The Roman Catholic church is building up to some convulsion when the Pope dies. And both churches realise that the conversion of England, should it come, needs to affect the 90 per cent of the population who do not go to church and not be a transfer of allegiances among the ten per cent who do.

Andrew Brown Religious affairs correspondent