He came, he saw, he conquered. The Pope's visit to Britain last weekend was vastly more successful than almost anyone anticipated, and if he didn't exactly conquer, he certainly persuaded many people that there is a lot more to Joseph Ratzinger than the caricature of him many might lead us to believe.

In the end, all those critics who did their best to try and ensure his visit would be an ignominious failure were reduced to petty and impotent fury by the huge and good-humoured crowds that turned out to greet the Pope.

Some 200,000 filled the Mall in London on Saturday night as the Pope made his way to Hyde Park. Two days before in Edinburgh, 125,000 people had lined the streets for him.

If the numbers at the two open-air Masses were down on 1982 when John Paul II visited, that was mainly due to security and financial considerations.

Depending on whose estimate you believe, between 500,000 and 750,000 people in this secular country with only a small minority of Catholics, turned out for him.

The Pope's visit was, in fact, the first bright spot for the Church in this part of the world in a long time -- a real morale booster.

The hours of live coverage on BBC and Sky gave Irish viewers a chance to see the visit for themselves, to see the Pope directly, rather than through the lens of the media, which is just as well, considering the begrudging tone of the coverage by RTE news. It was as though RTE was reporting a different event from the one people could see for themselves merely by switching channels.

The keynote speech of the Pope's visit was delivered on Friday evening in Westminster Hall before the leaders of civil and political life.

What he had to say to them was as pertinent to Ireland as to the UK. He spoke, for example, of the "inadequacy of pragmatic, short-term solutions to complex, social and ethical problems (that) has been illustrated all too clearly by the recent global financial crisis".

Most of our politicians positively pride themselves on their 'pragmatism', which in their case is simply a fancy word for following the crowd. Most of our politicians never offer leadership on anything at all because they lack a true over-arching vision of the common good.

The pragmatic approach is what led us straight over the financial precipice and is currently leading us over a social precipice because of a blind, ignorant, but strangely self-righteous, adoption of increasingly liberal social policies.

The Pope also spoke of the marginalisation of religion that was taking place. That's happening here as well, with the likes of Dermot Ahern advising politicians not to let religion "cloud" their judgment, and John Gormley instructing the bishops to "stick to the spiritual needs of their flock", rather than "intrude" on "matters of State", as though the future of Irish society is simply a matter for the State.

Benedict spoke of a growing threat to freedom of religion and freedom of conscience and, in Scotland the previous day, of "aggressive forms of secularism" and the "dictatorship of relativism".

Bizarrely, there are people who doubt that aggressive secularism even exists, who deny that the rights of religious believers are under increasing assault in Western societies. But if Richard Dawkins and company are not examples of aggressive secularism then what is?

And if the forced closure of Catholic adoption agencies in the UK and elsewhere because they want children to be adopted by married, opposite-sex couples isn't an example of a direct attack on the rights of religious organisations, then nothing is.

In some parts of the US, Christian nurses have been fired for not performing abortions. In Sweden, you must be willing to perform an abortion if you work in a public hospital. Pharmacists are increasingly being forced to dispense the morning-after-pill (an abortifacient), regardless of their convictions.

In Britain, a nurse was suspended from work for offering to pray for a patient. Christians have been investigated by police for "hate crimes" after handing out literature deemed "offensive" to minorities. In Ireland, a Catholic infertility doctor was recently investigated on a professional misconduct charge because he would only treat married couples.

Also, the Government and opposition parties refused to add a conscience clause to the Civil Partnership Bill, a true example of the "dictatorship of relativism" which insists that no distinction can be made between one "lifestyle choice" and another, and that those who make such distinctions must be penalised.

The most obvious impact of the Pope's visit to Britain was its success as a public spectacle. But he also had a message, and his message was that Christians have to start fighting back against attempts to drive them from public life and deprive them of their legitimate rights.

The visit will have been a real success only if Christians begin to take up that fight. If not, then one day they will wake up and discover that they have been reduced to second-class citizenship.

dquinn@independent.ie

Irish Independent