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Tuesday, February 01, 2000 Page: 6A
In response to Jennie Congleton’s let ter about “The Legacy of Galileo”
(Jan. 23), I wanted to reiterate that the original column describing the play
mentioned that it was “painstakingly researched” to ensure accuracy. With a
disclaimer worded that way, I and any member of the theater-going-public would
and should expect the content to be factual as far as history dictates. If I
had read “loosely based on current popular opinion,” I would not have given
the column another thought. I merely highlighted several points I knew to be
factually erroneous.
I do want to agree with Ms. Congleton’s assessment that “good artists are
not propagandists” … My only regrets are that we have so few “popular”
artists that can be also be called good by any stretch of the imagination and
that most bad artists are truly consummate propagandists.
Surely we all have been disabused of the fallacy that a Pulitzer-Prize
nomination or even the Pulitzer Prize itself guarantees good art. One has only
to look to the 1993 Pulitzer-Prize winner for drama, “Angels in America: A
Gay Fantasia on National Themes” to find tripe masquerading as art.
I am not saying “Legacy of Galileo” is tripe. What I am saying is that at
the heart of the matter is that Galileo wanted to teach something – which he
couldn’t prove – as fact. The Church had every right to censure him. Anything
contrary to those facts is not true, and therefore could not be presented as
“intellectually or spiritually edifying.”
I appreciated the quote of Galileo on divine providence. It was indeed
edifying. I had no intention of maligning Galileo’s reputation as a Roman
Catholic. Several key phrases were edited out of my original letter, thus
making it less clear on that point.
Mark Bielinski
Scranton