UNLIMITED Audiobooks and eBooks
Over 40,000 books & works on all major devices
Get ALL YOU CAN for FREE for 30 days!
Father Damien
Robert Louis Stevenson
Book Overview:
Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai, was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium and member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary,a missionary religious institute. He won recognition for his ministry in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, to people with leprosy, who had been placed under a government-sanctioned medical quarantine on the island of Molokaʻi.
After sixteen years caring for the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of those in the leper colony, he eventually contracted and died of the disease, and is considered a "martyr of charity".
Upon his death, a global discussion arose as to the mysteries of Damien's life and his work on the island of Molokaʻi. Much criticism came out of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches in Hawaiʻi. The most well-known treatise against Damien was by a Honolulu Presbyterian, Reverend Charles McEwen Hyde, in a letter to a fellow pastor, Hyde referred to Father Damien as "a coarse, dirty man" whose leprosy should be attributed to his "carelessness".
In 1889 Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson and his family arrived in Hawaiʻi for an extended stay. While there Stevenson, also a Presbyterian, drafted a famous open letter as a rebuttal in defense of Damien. The Catholic Encyclopedia judges that in this treatise "the memory of the Apostle of the Lepers is brilliantly vindicated". In the letter Stevenson answered Hyde's criticisms point by point. He sought testimony from critical Protestants who knew the man, which he recorded in his diary.
Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai, was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium and member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary,a missionary religious institute. He won recognition for his ministry in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, to people with leprosy, who had been placed under a government-sanctioned medical quarantine on the island of Molokaʻi.
After sixteen years caring for the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of those in the leper colony, he eventually contracted and died of the disease, and is considered a "martyr of charity".
Upon his death, a global discussion arose as to the mysteries of Damien's life and his work on the island of Molokaʻi. Much criticism came out of the Congregational and Presbyterian churches in Hawaiʻi. The most well-known treatise against Damien was by a Honolulu Presbyterian, Reverend Charles McEwen Hyde, in a letter to a fellow pastor, Hyde referred to Father Damien as "a coarse, dirty man" whose leprosy should be attributed to his "carelessness".
In 1889 Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson and his family arrived in Hawaiʻi for an extended stay. While there Stevenson, also a Presbyterian, drafted a famous open letter as a rebuttal in defense of Damien. The Catholic Encyclopedia judges that in this treatise "the memory of the Apostle of the Lepers is brilliantly vindicated". In the letter Stevenson answered Hyde's criticisms point by point. He sought testimony from critical Protestants who knew the man, which he recorded in his diary.
How does All You Can Books work?
All You Can Books gives you UNLIMITED access to over 40,000 Audiobooks, eBooks, and Foreign Language courses. Download as many audiobooks, ebooks, language audio courses, and language e-workbooks as you want during the FREE trial and it's all yours to keep even if you cancel during the FREE trial. The service works on any major device including computers, smartphones, music players, e-readers, and tablets. You can try the service for FREE for 30 days then it's just $19.99 per month after that. So for the price everyone else charges for just 1 book, we offer you UNLIMITED audio books, e-books and language courses to download and enjoy as you please. No restrictions.
Try now for FREE!
"Love your service - thanks so much for what you do!"
- Customer Cathryn Mazer
"I did not realize that you would have so many audio books I would enjoy"
- Customer Sharon Morrison
"For all my fellow Audio Book & E-Book regulars:
This is about as close to nirvana as I have found!"
- Twitter post from @bobbyekat
Community Reviews
Wow, RLS is angry. Probably rightly so.
Open letters were the Twitter of the 19th century.
Nel vedere di questi luoghi la miseria infinita, / Le mutilate membra, i volti devastati, / Le vittime innocenti che sorridono sotto la sferza, / Lo stolto sarebbe tentato di negare il suo Dio. // Egli vede e si ritrae; ma se torna a guardare, / La bellezza ecco sorge dal grembo del dolore! / Vede l
An incensed Robert Louis Stevenson chastises the Reverend Doctor Hyde, a Protestant of Honolulu, for his gossipy slander of Father Damien, a Catholic priest who ministered to the local leper colony … Beloved author Stevenson nails the Rev. Dr. Hyde to the hen-house door (if only he’d done that liter
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, I LOVE YOU.
I mean, I've always liked you. I enjoyed Kidnapped as a child and Treasure Island has become a reliable old favorite. A Child's Garden of Verses is sheer beauty. But it wasn't until flipping through the bibliography at the end of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that I real
Scathing and enjoyable - this letter & the irony of 'Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde's' publication prior to this causes me to smile.
Favorite line: "...and he was your father too, if God had given you grace to see it."
Every once in a while, it's a great privilege to hear someone "tell it like it is". That's exactly what Robert Louis Stevenson does in this letter. A pastor attempts to besmirch the name and work of a Roman Catholic priest named Damien who helped the lepers in Hawaii, and Stevenson unloads both barr
When Father Damien, missionary to the lepers of Molokai—canonized as a saint of the Catholic Church in 2009—contracted leprosy and died of it in 1889, the Presbyterian Reverend C.M. Hyde of Honolulu—who lived in a comfortable house on the mainland and had not ministered to Molokai—issued the followi
Completamente differente rispetto alle aspettative.
È stato comunque interessante approfondire la figura di Stevenson come uomo forte, che lotta per difendere i propri ideali, ciò in cui crede.
R.L.S. delivers a withering corrective in how to judge someone to Father Damien's detractor and moral inferior. Later, he regretted sending it, just like we do our angry e-mails. He may have been wrong in that, though; his righteous wrath probably did more good un-redacted. Even though it was writte