Religion
Ross Douthat sees that the Pope understands the world stakes in his opening to the Anglicans: It's about standing up to Islam.
Where the European encounter is concerned, Pope Benedict has opted for public confrontation. In a controversial 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, he explicitly challenged Islam's compatibility with the Western way of reason -- and sparked, as if in vindication of his point, a wave of Muslim riots around the world.By contrast, the Church of England's leadership has opted for conciliation (some would say appeasement), with the Archbishop of Canterbury going so far as to speculate about the inevitability of some kind of sharia law in Britain.
There are an awful lot of Anglicans, in England and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader who takes Benedict's approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one, if they want him.
Glenn Greenwald provides a much-needed smackdown to the laughable inference that the non-Muslim religions of the West are any more compatible with the ways of reason:
https://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/index.html
He should have mentioned this as well - the anti-reason lunacy from Palin's "Real America":
https://www.jesuscampthemovie.com/
Not to mention these good conservatives, who I think it's safe to say are all on board to do their part for any sort of "blitzkrieg" against "invasive" non-Christian faiths, even if it instrumentally reduces people of all faiths to competitive breeders (who, when they're people of say, the Islamic faith, are "breeding like rats" - as I've heard the right-wingers describe them). Oh so reasonable! So very compatible to the "Western way of reason"! Spare me:
https://www.newsweek.com/id/189763
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102005062
This kind of political analysis is off the mark. Offering a path for catholic-minded Anglican into the Church was inevitable once it became clear that mainstream Anglicanism had drifted so far from apostolic Christianity that corporate reunion was unthinkable. The only political aspect of this is the defeat suffered by the British Catholic hierarchy. It is after all the Pope's job to be the minister of unity for the universal church. He is generously reaching out to people who want to become fully Catholic.