Stephan, I’m cutting off my responses at this point. The editor launched into an incredibly crude tirade against Lew for his brief statement on Galileo, lecturing him on all the nuance involved in the case, which Lew nowhere denied. I am morally certain that I know more about the Galileo case than anyone at Rockford, and I’m well aware of all the complexity involved, the sympathetic churchmen, the nature of the debate, the abrasiveness of Galileo, etc. But what Lew said was only a summary of what the Dominican Jerome Langford concluded in his great book, which is universally regarded as the soundest and most even-handed treatment of the incident. I guess Langford, too, is a wicked anti-Christian who peddles only a mythological version of Galileo? Good grief!
As anyone who has read or met him knows, Lew is too civilized and gentlemanly to return such bizarre savagery in kind. You know what they say about living well being the best revenge.
10:51 pm on June 24, 2004
