Visions of saints will be before us this weekend as the Catholic Church bestows that title on two former popes. We’ll envision them in white robes because that’s how we saw them on the television screen and other media in recent history, Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005, and Pope John XXIII, who died in 1963.
There’s a small but growing group of people in Hawaii and elsewhere who envision a future saint in blue denim.
That would be Brother Joseph Dutton, a Civil War veteran from Wisconsin who was drawn to Hawaii by the story of Father Damien’s service to leprosy patients. Dutton arrived in Kalaupapa in 1886, in time to be helper and confidant for Damien in his last years before death in 1889. He continued to work with leprosy patients quarantined there, in collaboration with Mother Marianne Cope, until his death in 1931. As well we know, the priest and the Franciscan nun have been declared saints within the past five years.
Unlike Hawaii’s two saints, Dutton did not live a structured life in a religious order that molded his spirituality and prepared him for a life of service.
Long years of alcoholism and abandonment by his wife who ran off with another man shadowed his life after discharge from the U.S. Army in 1866. He worked in a number of gritty jobs, starting with seeking the dead scattered on battlefields to bring them to a common burial ground that became the Arlington National Cemetery.
His growing sense of dissatisfaction with his own behavior and repentance eventually led Dutton to seek out the Catholic faith. He was baptized on April 27, 1883, his 40th birthday. It’s a milestone in a quiet life deserving of celebration that will go largely unremarked in ironic contrast to the pomp and pageantry of the dual canonization that will unroll at the Vatican on the same date.
The fact that he had flaws and missteps in life but rose above them is what makes the man in blue denim a role model, and possible saint, according to his fans.
“He is a realistic and credible kind of individual,” said Father Raymond Roden, spiritual director at a New York seminary. “He would be understood by people going through harshness in life … soldiers, policemen and firefighters, blue collar workers. He is very real to them.
“Dutton would be in the category of penitent, people who did bad things then came back to live good and holy lives. He was a soldier in a horrendous war and was traumatized by that. He married a woman who betrayed him. He reacted with bitterness and alcoholism. But then he had a real conversion … he discovered Damien, and the rest is history.”
Father Roden brought 20 seminarians from the Douglaston, N.Y., Cathedral Seminary for a weeklong retreat in Hawaii in January. It included an overnight stay in Kalaupapa, and programs of speakers and contemplation of the spirituality and service of the people who worked and lived there.
Resolved to do penance
Dutton entered a Trappist monastery in Kentucky resolving to do “penance for the rest of my life” for his “wild years” and “sinful capers.” But after 20 months of the contemplative solitude, he moved on. He wrote that his motive was not to hide from the world but “to do some good for my neighbor and at the same time, make it my penitentiary in doing penance for my sins and errors,” according to a mini-biography on the Patheos website by Catholic historian Pat McNamara, whose column “In Ages Past” is online.
There are few biographies to be found but Dutton comes to life in a description by Dr. A.A. Mouritz, who was a physician at Kalaupapa for four years. It was quoted in a 1931 obituary carried in Vermont newspapers. Like Wisconsin, Vermont lays claim to Dutton who was born in Stowe, Vermont, originally named Ira Barnes Dutton, a name he put behind, choosing Joseph when he was baptized.
Mouritz wrote about meeting Dutton after he walked down the steep trail from topside Molokai, where he had disembarked from a boat. “It is a hot, dusty, fatiguing trip … yet Dutton showed no fatigue nor travel stained clothes. He wore a blue denim suit, which fitted his well-knit, slim, lithe, muscular figure. He stood about five feet seven inches tall, had dark brown hair and grayish-blue eyes, low voice, placid features and pleasant smile. He was reserved and thoughtful, had nothing to say about his past nor the reason for his seeking seclusion and work at Molokai and turning his back on the world forever.
“Brother Dutton soon demonstrated that leprosy had no power to instill fear in his mind,” wrote the physician, detailing the bandaging and patient nursing care Dutton learned from Damien. “Within a very short period, he had become so apt that he surpassed his teacher,” Mouritz wrote.
Dutton brought his experiences, as an Army quartermaster and from several other jobs, to help turn the Molokai settlement into an orderly society. One of his greatest achievements was to build and administer the Baldwin Home for teenage boys and men, and to harness their energy as a work force.
Now that the dust has settled from the canonization of St. Damien in 2009 and St. Marianne in 2012, there is the beginning of a movement to add Brother Joseph to the litany of Hawaii saints.
Dutton is memorialized in two statues which have been added to the landscape in topside Molokai and Honolulu in the past year. One was installed in August outside St. Joseph Church in Kamalo, a Molokai church that Damien built.
Army veteran Jon Perreira, 93, of Oahu commissioned the statues, designed by himself and Larry Helm of the Molokai Veterans Caring for Veterans. They chose to depict Dutton as a Union soldier, at the beginning of what played out to be a lifetime of service to others, with a few dark years interruption.
Sister Joan of Arc Souza, a Sister of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities and head of Saint Francis School, decided to put the second edition of the statue in a prominent place on the Manoa campus. She sees Brother Dutton as a role model for the male students, who make up 50 percent of the student body which became coed in 2006.
“They study about Kalaupapa in religion class, and learn his life story. They’ll say ‘Sister, he was a bad dude.’ It’s a lesson that no matter what you do, there’s hope for everyone. You can do good with your lives.”
That is a lesson even more meaningful to veterans who could connect Dutton’s story to their own lives, said Dr. Maria Devera, a psychiatrist who works with military families on Oahu.
“What happened to him happens to our military. He saw a lot of people die. They have anxiety, difficulty in the transition to civilian life. There’s divorce, there’s drugs, some never find their way.
“Brother Dutton talked about his 10 lost years. To see someone who made changes in his life, it empowers them,” Devera said. “For a veteran today to see that you can go beyond yourself, you can make a fresh start, you can help others, it’s important. That’s what we want to bring out.”
Dutton’s email address
Devera has been researching Dutton at his roots in Vermont and Wisconsin and in other places. She’s the spearhead of a small committee which has Bishop Larry Silva’s blessing to explore launching a sainthood cause.
The diocese has established an email address to accept messages from people with devotion to Dutton, or questions, or information to share, or anecdotes about prayers answered when they invoked his intercession with God.
Email josephdutton@rcchawaii.org.
The first step is to foster devotion to Dutton on a wider scale, said Sacred Hearts Father William Petrie, pastor of St. Damien Church on Molokai. He said the bishop will approve a Brother Dutton prayer in the near future.
The Damien and Marianne sainthood causes had the benefit of backing by their religious orders, the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts and the Franciscans, which provided an international network to promote devotion, and the finances and know-how to navigate the sainthood process through the Vatican.
As for the Dutton cause, there are a few sprouts of interest that don’t yet amount to a grassroots movement.
“There’s no groundswell,” Father Petrie said. “We’re starting by doing our own bit and sharing what we can.”
