The Vatican is being more than gracious in acknowledging the apology from Britain’s foreign office for the insults in respect of Benedict XVI that were contained in a memorandum being circulated in advance of the Pope’s visit to London later this year. In the memo, government aides joked, according to the Associated Press account of the story, that the Pope could open an abortion clinic, launch a line of condoms, or sing a duet with the head of the Church of England, Elizabeth II. A British envoy met with Vatican officials to extend a formal apology, and afterward, a spokesman for the Vatican, Rev. Federico Lombardi, was quoted by the AP as saying that Britain had “supplied all the explanations, and there is nothing to add.”

Nonetheless, it’s a remarkable moment. What would have been the reaction had a memo been circulated in the British foreign office suggesting that, say, the visiting Chief Rabbi of Israel be invited to dine on the British staple of pork pie or a visiting Imam be taken to visit sidewalk sketches of Mohammed? No doubt one would have seen more than the reassignment of one aide, which is what was reported to have been done by the Foreign Office in the latest imbroglio. One doesn’t have to draw a parallel with anti-Semitism, which is a virus without exact parallels in other forms of bigotry, to remark that anti-Catholic bigots have emerged from their cover, if they were ever in it, as the left has, for its own reasons, made anti-Catholic hostility acceptable in polite society.

There are those who will suggest that this arises from the sex scandals, and no doubt some of it does. One of Britain’s leading intellectuals, Christopher Hitchens, is mounting, in advance of the Pope’s visit to London, a campaign to have Benedict arrested when he gets to England. Another of Britain’s famous writers, Philip Pullman, gave an interview the other day to the Guardian that was published under the headline: “I hope the wretched Catholic church will vanish entirely.” Well, they are writers and strong opinion is part of their trade. But what is one to make of the kind of sneering and derisiveness implicit in the chatter that has been going on inside the Foreign Office? And of the silence that has greeted the disclosure of the memo that encapsulated it?

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“Whence did the hatred come from?” is the question our Daniel Johnson posed when, two years ago, a crowd set up a deafening din outside Westminster Cathedral while the former prime minister, Tony Blair, in the wake of his conversion to Catholicism and the launch of his new Faith Foundation, was inside lecturing on the importance of tolerance and respect. It’s a haunting question. The fact is that there are many outside of Britain, and outside of either the Church of England or Catholicism, who view the pending state visit to England of Pope Benedict with interest. These columns have previously observed that “[s]eeking unity in Christendom would be a great cause for a pontiff who comprehends that purely secular societies that oppress religion are inherently unstable and that the challenges of radical Islamism are directed not only at Catholicism but at the West itself.”