Putting a Lisbon Correction on Record

A few weeks ago was the 250th anniversary of the terrible Lisbon earthquake, an event I have an illustrated page about. A sentence there touched inadvertently on an old urban legend that after the quake, the Catholic priests of Lisbon hunted heretics in the streets and hanged them on the spot. The uncritical Simon Winchester passed it on in his book "A Crack in the Edge of the World," to contrast how rational we were in 1906 (if he only knew!), and the columnist George Will, citing Winchester, repeated the calumny to millions of readers.

Catholic Exchange writer Theresa Carpinelli rightly got her dander up at this, penning a four-part series that should dash this scurrilous thread for good. However, when she wrote to point out my miswording, it was only after first lumping me in with Simon and George in part 3, then waiting for three weeks. Helping me fix an error is a welcome favor; making good and sure to spread it around first is not.