"A Commercial for Religious Freedom"?

Anne Applebaum writes, at Slate, that the "fuss over Pope Benedict's visit to Britain was a blessing for Catholicism."  I might characterize the orgy of ignorance, bile, and hate in which many revelled as a bit more than a "fuss", but I see her point.  She observes:

All in all, [the Pope's visit] was a huge success. But had he been treated politely from the start, I suspect the pope would have come and gone and left no trace. The vast majority of Britons are not Catholic, and they would have tuned out deferential accounts of his sermons. The press would have relegated the whole thing to the religion section. Perhaps the faithful would still have come to Mass, though maybe not so many. In the end, around 500,000 people probably saw him during his visit, which is quite a lot in a country composed largely of pagans and Protestants.

And thus did Benedict's visit to Britain turn into an advertisement for religious freedom—both the freedom to abhor religion and the freedom to practice it. Much to everyone's surprise, including the Vatican's, raucous discussion of Catholicism turned out to be good for Catholicism—and interesting for atheists, too. The true aging theocrats—in Saudi Arabia, in Iran—should take note.