Saint Damien: the rest of the story

Just yesterday (October 11, 2009), Pope Benedict XVI canonized Father Damien, a Belgian priest who spent the last 16 years of his life working ministering to a colony of lepers on the Hawaiian island of Molokai in the 1800s.

In the late 1880s, when a certain Presbyterian pastor named Dr. Hyde wrote a letter to a fellow clergyman speaking ill of Father Damien, Robert Louis Stevenson, the famous protestant novelist, who had visited Molokai shortly after Father Damien himself died of leprosy, wrote a scathing open letter of rebuke to Dr. Hyde.

Here is a brief summary of the exchange, with several of Hyde's one-line slurs met by Stevenson's response (http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2009/10/saint-of-molokai.html):

Sunday, October 11, 2009

The Saint of Molokai

Damien was COARSE.

It is very possible. You make us sorry for the lepers, who had only a coarse old peasant for their friend and father. But you, who were so refined, why were you not there, to cheer them with the lights of culture? Or may I remind you that we have some reason to doubt if John the Baptist were genteel; and in the case of Peter, on whose career you doubtless dwell approvingly in the pulpit, no doubt at all he was a ‘coarse, headstrong’ fisherman! Yet even in our Protestant Bibles Peter is called Saint.

Damien was DIRTY.

He was. Think of the poor lepers annoyed with this dirty comrade! But the clean Dr. Hyde was at his food in a fine house.

Damien was HEADSTRONG.

I believe you are right again; and I thank God for his strong head and heart.

Damien was BIGOTED.

I am not fond of bigots myself, because they are not fond of me. But what is meant by bigotry, that we should regard it as a blemish in a priest? Damien believed his own religion with the simplicity of a peasant or a child; as I would I could suppose that you do. For this, I wonder at him some way off; and had that been his only character, should have avoided him in life. But the point of interest in Damien, which has caused him to be so much talked about and made him at last the subject of your pen and mine, was that, in him, his bigotry, his intense and narrow faith, wrought potently for good, and strengthened him to be one of the world’s heroes and exemplars.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Open Letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde of Honolulu

[Letter by the Protestant writer in response to

the accusations of Dr.C. M. Hyde, Presbyterian minister in Honolulu]

Sydney, February 25, 1890

Related

[Hugo Mendez, from the Rorate Caeli comment box yesterday]

Ahh! You forgot the most pertinent words of Stevenson today to Dr. Hyde:

"If that world at all remember you, on the day when Damien of Molokai shall be named a Saint, it will be in virtue of one work: your letter to the Reverend H. B. Gage."

That day is today (!). Over a century later, we continue to honor the works of St. Damien, who gave his entire life for the healing of the diseased and outcast. As for Dr. Hyde, the world cannot remember a significant work of mercy, act of charity, or lasting gift to humanity, he provided. Instead, his entire legacy is a footnote in history... for slandering St. Damien with false accusations. This is his only legacy in the year 2009.

Welcome to the history books, Rev. Hyde.

[Hat tip to Rorate Caeli.]