meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
American Catholic History

Brother Joseph Dutton, Friend of the Lepers of Molokai

American Catholic History

Noelle & Tom Crowe

History, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Education

5724 Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2025

⏱️ 21 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Joseph Dutton, born Ira Dutton in 1843, was a good kid, born to protestant parents. He fought in the Civil War as a quartermaster, advancing from sergeant to captain because of his efficiency and ability. The decade after the Civil War he later called his "wild years" due to a bad marriage and a life of dissipation, under the influence of "John Barleycorn." In the late 1870s he changed his ways and became Catholic as he sought a way to do penance for his bad decade. He tried the contemplative life at the Trappist Abbey at Gethsemane in Kentucky, but that didn't work. He stumbled upon an article about Father Damien de Veuster, the priest who lived among the lepers on the Kalaupapa peninsula of the Hawaiian island of Molokai. The plight of those people and the work done by Father Damien inspired him. He joined Father Damien in 1886 and didn't leave Kalaupapa until 1930, when he was 87 years old. During those 44 years he became everything to the lepers. He was administrator, nurse, pharmacist, carpenter, stone mason, and even baseball coach. His work became known around the world, in part because he wrote thousands of letters to anyone. He died in 1931 at 87 years old. In 2022 his cause for canonization was opened, and he is now known as Servant of God.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello and welcome to American Catholic History, brought to you by the support of listeners like you.

0:12.0

If you value this podcast, please become a supporter at American Catholic History.org

0:17.2

slash support.

0:18.8

I'm Newell Hester Crowe.

0:19.8

And I'm Tom Crow.

0:25.4

Today we're taking up a story that a few supporters have suggested to us.

0:26.9

We hadn't forgotten it.

0:29.9

We are happy to finally be talking about him.

0:35.2

He was a man who, in pursuit of a life of penance, moved to Hawaii.

0:37.1

Now that is my kind of penance.

0:41.4

Yeah, this wasn't bucolic Maui or Kauai.

0:48.3

He went to live on the Kalawu Papa peninsula of Malachi, back when it was where the government sent people with leprosy to live in quarantine.

0:51.9

Yeah, now that's a buzzkill.

0:53.2

Yeah, isn't it?

0:54.5

But from a purely worldly perspective, that is,

0:57.4

if you consider that two of the people who worked among the lepers have been canonized,

1:02.2

St. Damien de Vuster and St. Marian Cope,

1:05.3

from the view of God, it was nearly heaven on earth.

1:08.6

Yeah, God really works in mysterious ways.

1:10.7

I mean, any atheists, I've heard this sort of a thing,

1:13.4

who says that, you know, God is just some projection of man's own self-image of his own perfection,

1:19.3

hasn't really wrestled with people like St. Damien, St. Marian, or this episode's subject,

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Noelle & Tom Crowe, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Noelle & Tom Crowe and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.