March 21

It is a long-settled fact that the Anglican Church is really nothing more than Catholic Lite. In the England of the sixteenth century however, it is more like Catholic Light. In 1556, Thomas Cranmer was the Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a rather committed member of the Anglican Church. You would not be incorrect if you were to label him one of the cornerstones of Anglican theology. He’s the guy who gave Henry VIII a divorce from Catherine of Aragon, which led to the dominoes falling for the Roman Catholic Church in England. Cranmer was also on the wrong side of the street in all that nastiness that surrounded Lady Jane Grey and her attempt to usurp the throne. With Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne, she being a Catholic definitely out of the closet, Cranmer tried to do a bit of back-pedaling to distance himself from his rabidly anti-Catholic views. He was not terribly successful at this however and Mary directed that he either recant or be burned at the stake. He gave recanting a shot, though he didn’t really have his heart in it. Mary then directed that he declare his position in public. He was led into a square on the 21st in 1556 and placed on top of a big pile of sticks. This should have given him a clue that he should probably have paid a bit closer attention to what was going on. He was called upon to make public his belief that the pope was an o.k. kind of guy he said, instead, "And as for the Pope, I refuse him, as Christ's enemy and Antichrist, with all his false doctrine.” A match was then put to the woodpile and all his hopes for having a good day went up in smoke.