The news media have portrayed this rightward outreach largely through the lens of culture-war politics ”” as an attempt to consolidate, inside the Catholic tent, anyone who joins the Vatican in rejecting female priests and gay marriage.
But in making the opening to Anglicanism, Benedict also may have a deeper conflict in mind ”” not the parochial Western struggle between conservative and liberal believers, but Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam.
Here Catholicism and Anglicanism share two fronts. In Europe, both are weakened players, caught between a secular majority and an expanding Muslim population. In Africa, increasingly the real heart of the Anglican Communion, both are facing an entrenched Islamic presence across a fault line running from Nigeria to Sudan.
Fascinating read. Leave it to the Liberal bent to coddle the real enemy of Christians everywhere.
Intercessor