An interesting piece by the distinguished historian Eamon Duffy on Benedict XVI's visit to Britain. The short version: Benedict enters an English culture where Catholic are, paradoxically, more accepted at all levels of society than before, but where a public anti-Catholicism is gaining renewed energy. The Pope's own combative orientation to the modern world is, in Duffy's view, unhelpful.

John T. McGreevy is the Charles and Jill Fischer Provost at the University of Notre Dame.

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