Madam, - Where does Dr Seamus Murphy SJ (September 30th) get the impression that I claimed "the Galileo case proves Church hostility to science"? My point was that the case proved Church hostility to Galileo and his empirical evidence supporting Copernican heliocentricity, in rebuttal of a claim that this hostility was "imaginary".
I have not made any "assumptions" nor have I "ignored" the historical context. For the record, I do not disagree with much of the factual evidence that Dr Murphy cites but I do note that, in his list of clerical scientists, he omits the eminent Jesuit palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin. Interesting! - Yours, etc,
MARTIN J. KINSELLA, Luxembourg.