Trying To Understand God's Will

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"What if" history is not a thing for Catholics: we have to learn to accept that God knows what's what better than we do. This is a really hard lesson to learn.

I wrote about Professor Duffy's latest book a couple of days ago. Having finished it, the thing that haunts me about the (wonderful, phenomenally well-researched, beautifully written) book is one specific point: that if only Cranmer had been left to live as a snivelling, apologetic, self-confessed heretic who had returned to God's Church, then the chances are that the Marian Reform, the Herald of the Counter-Reformation, would have taken root in the country in which it was developed. Well, (and as City fans have enjoyed saying over the last couple of days) "Deal with it!": he wasn't; it didn't. History happened. It didn't work then. And it didn't work in the next reign. And then it was too late.

But what if ...
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