New light on the universal

Nearly four years after joining the Catholic Church, the Editor of the Daily Telegraph explains how that decision has affected his outlook — including the renewed debate on abortion
CHARLES MOORE is not at the Daily Telegraph. He's been urgently called away to interview the Chancellor, Gordon Brown. His secretary brings me into his office which resembles nothing so much as a country house drawing room: a long Victorian table in light pine stands in the centre, the day's newspapers neatly folded in three rows across the surface. Next to the desk is a low soft grey sofa. Comical cartoons of Charles Moore and previous editors adorn the walls alongside a set of formal framed photographs: Charles Moore interviewing Lady Thatcher in her heyday, and the Queen engrossed in the Sunday Telegraph. It's a stark contrast to the grim functionalism of the Telegraph offices where each turn of the corner reveals yet another anodyne patch of grey. The Editor's office exudes a sort of sprawling ease, all the more striking since a glass wall permits passers-by to stare right in.
This air of understated elegance seems tenably British, and highly appropriate to the editor of this newspaper.
Charles Moore, educated at Eton and Cambridge, a former editor of The Spectator and the Sunday Telegraph, he seems a pillar of establishment England that holy trinity of Tory politics, public schools and the Church of England but in 1994 converted to Roman Catholicism.
When we meet, Charles Moore fast makes plain he was am-acted to the universal claims of the Catholic Church: "I quite like English Catholicism, but that's not what I'm particularly interested in. I'm interested in what the word Catholic means: universal. Essentially when you go to Mass you really feel you are equal before God. The impression one gets is that it is for everybody, quite regardless absolutely regardless of their background, sex, class, age and race."
Mr Moore says that the universality of the Church has made him re-evaluate politics: "Catholicism puts politics in rather a different light, because you can have real rapport with people who are very Left-wing even if you are pretty right wing. In contrast to real Liberation Theology, I think a lot of left wing Catholicism is absolutely mainstream. Whereas I don't agree with Left-wing ideas at all on most things, being a Catholic is more important than one's political views, so it can help you to understand other people's politics."
Mr Moore is quietly insistent that the British need to face the horrors of abortion: "This issue is terribly excluded from debate in Britain. It's very hard to get a proper debate going if political parties won't play. Some aspects of the abortion debate in America are absolutely frightful: at least you can't escape the issue there, but you can escape it here."
How much sympathy would thy average reader of the Daily Telegraph have with these views "The Daily Telegraph has got nothing to do with any Church but it is broadly a Christian paper and I think one of the good things about it is that it feels able to be frankly Christian without embarrassment, though I hope without exclusion either. We can advance specifically Christian arguments in a way most newspapers are hesitant of doing. I think you can do a Iot to draw public attention to certain issues which otherwise tend to get pushed aside and so get a good debate going. I think that's an important part of the job, actually."
The Daily Telegraph is well known for its harsh editorial line on European Union. But has Moore's conversion altered his perceptions of the European Union?
"I think on the whole Catholics would be more likely to be for a united Europe than would Anglicans because Angli
canism is to do with English independence historically. Most of the founding fathers of the European Union were Catholics. Dr Paisley will tell you it's no coincidence it's called the Treaty of Rome. I do believe that one of the good things about the movement towards it is the idea of unity of Western Christian civilisation which fundamentally is Catholic, not only Catholic, but... but it doesn't make me change my basic view that what's actually proposed for European union is a huge political mistake."
Mr Moore is sinking back into the little grey sofa: legs crossed, eyes gazing up at the ceiling. He strikes a slightly boyish figure : his hair fluffing up on the top of his head. A longish pause precedes each reply: he lapses into considered thought for several seconds after each question. There is no smooth PR guff or extravagant articulacy: he chooses his words with care, continually correcting himself. But his apparent diffidence masks marked opinions and flashes of startling honesty as when he speaks of his conversion: "The most difficult thing about converting is when one's family doesn't like it. I think that is to do with the idea of Catholicism being somehow foreign or alien, because what family members in particular think, more so than do friends, is `We're being abandoned'. I did find a bit of that in my wider family. It hugely diminishes once you've actually done it."
Mr Moore says the present Pope and John Henry Newman aroused his interest in Catholicism: "And I suppose Evelyn Waugh, though there are many things about his Catholicism I don't like because though I'm quite a conservative, I am pro the key aspects of Vatican H. I strongly believe in the idea of a pilgrim Church rather than a triumphalist Church. I think Evelyn Waugh was rather of an absolutist view."
Charles Moore was received in a period which saw many high-profile Anglicans "crossing the Tiber". Is English mistrust of Rome now an anachronism?: "It's fair to say that lots of people still think that Catholics are almost foreigners and not completely to be trusted. Compared with what people thought 50 years ago the changes are enormous. The present Cardinal has been astute at changing that.
"The Catholic Church seems more central to the spiritual life of Britain than it used to." Catholics, Moore believes, should capitalise on their new-found acceptability: "Now Catholicism is more in the mainstream of British life, it could be bolder. I think Catholics in public affairs are perhaps a little timid in their originality of argument. They're not really opening up the issues boldly and taking enough risks."
Moore has been at the forefront of the battle to introduce a workable and effective code of ethics to regulate reporting. He fearlessly accused Sir David English, chairman of Associated Newspapers, of intrusive and sensationalist reporting in the Daily Mad last autumn. His Leader column has also questioned the sincerity of the Press Complaints Commission's new code of practice, given that Bridget Rowe, Editor of the Sunday Mirror, which was notably relentless in its pursuit of the Princess of Wales, was among those charged with drawing it up.
But putting ethics into practice, he will acknowledge, can be tricky (the Telegraph was criticised for publishing a photograph of Prince Harry at an Arsenal football match, although his defenders point out that turning up in full public view at a televised event attended by 30,000 or more people was hardly a private occasion...).
Tony Blair's public espousal of Christianity wins him few brownie points: "I'm a bit unimpressed with the way Tony Blair deploys Christianity partly because I think `deploy' is the word, and I don't think it's somehing you should deploy you are a Christian , you don't deploy it I think there's a bit of being seen to pray, without anything else much to show for it.
"One test of trying to practise your faith is that when there is an apparent conflict berwen your faith and some other interest your faith prevails. That doesn't seem to be the case with Tony Blair. He's been absolutely useless about abortion."
The Agony Aunt column by an Anglican vicar's wife, Anne Atkins, was deliberately introduced by Mr Moore: "I thought it was high time to stop this monopoly of all these agony aunts who all say the same nonsense: discover the 'real you' and all that. Anne's agony column is a very good antidote to that."
Charles Moore favours reasoned debate: crude sanctimoniousness is not the house style: "What you can't do is to say the Catholic Church or the Bible teaches X so it must be obeyed, because you are telling people to follow an authority they may or may not follow. What you can do is to bring along a lot of people who are either Christians or who are open to a basically Christian approach.
"That sort of thing is perfectly appropriate: what you mustn't do is to get denominational or do propaganda for bishops. Indeed one the things we spend a lot of time doing is criticising bishops of all denominations!" laughs Mr Moore.