Holy Blowout Week continued yesterday as Benedict took Anne to the (holy vestment) cleaners. Today, features the long-anticipated match-up between Big Pineapple and Big Lobster as the Hawaiian Damien of Molokai takes on the Mainer Frances Perkins. Can the Hawaii lobby do for Damien what it did for Queen Emma last year? Last year's Lent Madness cinderella, Emma, rode the wave all the way to the finals. Will Damien have a similar run or will he be pounded into the surf by Frances?
In other news, the Supreme Executive Committee answered some critics even as they prepare to co-lead a workshop today titled "Stealth Christian Formation" at the CEEP conference in San Diego. They're amazing multi-taskers (with enough coffee and a deadline).
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Damien of Molokai
Jozef de Veuster was born to a Flemish corn merchant in 1840. His fondest dream was to be a missionary-priest like his hero, St. Francis Xavier, but his teachers thought he was unintelligent and delayed his ordination. Finally, he was ordained, taking the name Damien and was eventually sent overseas, taking the place of his brother, who had fallen ill.
He arrived in the kingdom of Hawaii on March 19, 1864, and was assigned initially to his order’s mission on Oahu. But Damien had landed in a community struggling with the effects of colonialism, including foreign diseases to which Hawaiians had no immunity. One of these was leprosy, and in 1865, the kingdom’s government set up quarantines for the afflicted on the island of Molokai, fearing a complete epidemic.
The government’s plan was for the lepers’ colonies to grow their own food and to be largely self-sustaining. This plan had some major logic-holes in it, however, and after a while, it became clear to the local bishop that the people were in trouble. A priest was needed in Molokai but he was reluctant to assign anyone fearing the assignment would be tantamount to a death sentence.
After much prayer, in 1873, Damien volunteered. In May, he arrived in Molokai, and promptly set to work. He lived as one of the people. He set up a church, schools, and farms. He tended gardens and built houses. He organized activities and choirs for the living. He built coffins and dug graves for the dying. When his agreed-upon time was up, the lepers and Fr. Damien went to the bishop, and asked if he could remain with them. The bishop agreed, and Fr. Damien stayed on.
Six months after his arrival on Molokai, Damien wrote back to his brother in Belgium, “I make myself a leper with the lepers to gain all to Jesus Christ.” His words turned out to be prescient. In 1884 he was diagnosed with the disease himself and died on Molokai in April, 1889.
After his death, his fame spread. After being attacked by an anti-Catholic Presbyterian minister, Robert Louis Stevenson (yes, that Robert Louis Stevenson) wrote an open letter defending him, and no less than Mahatma Ghandi claimed Fr. Damien as an inspiration for his work with the outcast. He was made a saint in the Roman church in October of 2009.
Collect for Damien of Molokai
God of compassion, we bless your Name for the ministries of Damien [and Marianne,] who ministered to the lepers abandoned on Molokai in the Hawaiian Islands. Help us, following their examples, to be bold and loving in confronting the incurable plagues of our time, that your people may live in health and hope; through Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Frances Perkins
Born in Boston in 1880 with roots in Maine, Frances Perkins studied at Mount Holyoke College and completed a masters degree in economics and sociology at Columbia University. While working as a young woman in Chicago, she was drawn to the Episcopal Church and confirmed in 1905.
At 31, working for the Factory Investigation Commission in New York City, she witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist fire that resulted in the death of 146 people, primarily young women factory workers. Perkins often said later, “The New Deal was born on March 25, 1911.” That experience galvanized her career as an advocate for workers. At a time when few women enjoyed a professional career after marriage and children, Perkins was spurred in her career by the emergence of her husband’s mental illness and his inability to earn an income. As the mother of a young daughter, she understood on a deep personal level the importance of work and the urgency of supporting a family.
In 1918, New York Governor Al Smith invited her serve in his administration and, with the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt to governor in 1928, she was named Commissioner of Labor. When he was elected to the presidency in 1932, Roosevelt asked Perkins to serve as his Secretary of Labor, the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet and the longest-serving cabinet member in U.S. history.
Roosevelt called her “the cornerstone of his administration” for her tireless work in gaining passage of the Social Security Act of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards of 1938 which established the minimum wage and prohibited child labor in most workplaces. Other New Deal efforts championed by Perkins included the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), unemployment insurance, a shorter work week, and worker safety regulations.
She has been called Roosevelt’s moral conscience. Donn Mitchell, in his 2010 profile of Frances Perkins published at www.AnglicanExaminer.com, “Architect of the Gracious Society,” suggests she was the “most overtly religious and theologically articulate member of the New Deal team.” Throughout her 12 years as Secretary she took a monthly retreat with the Episcopal order of All Saints’ Sisters of the Poor, with whom she was a lay associate
“I came to Washington to serve God, FDR, and millions of forgotten, plain common workingmen,” she said. Her theology of generosity informed her professional life and, in turn, transformed the lives of millions of Americans.
She remained active in teaching, social justice advocacy, and in the mission of the Episcopal Church until her death in 1965.
Collect for Frances Perkins
Loving God, whose Name is blest for Frances Perkins, who lived out her belief that the special vocation of the laity is to conduct the secular affairs of society that all may be maintained in health and decency: Help us, following her example, to contend tirelessly for justice and for the protection of all in need, that we may be faithful followers of Jesus Christ; who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
-- Heidi Shott
UPDATE: At 2:06 a.m. EST, the SEC noticed some irregular voting in this contest. About 200 votes were cast from one address in Arizona on behalf of Damien. Those votes have been deleted, and the address has been banned.
Vote!
[poll id="53"]
177 comments on “Damien of Molokai vs. Frances Perkins”
Okay, I know I have a tendency to overthink things and I know this is only a frivolous game, but I need to get something off my chest. It's really bothering me that people are voting based on their own ego-identifications or their political agendas. I'm a social worker too but to vote for the social worker for that reason or to vote for Damien because my first grade teacher's name was Sister Damien or to vote for Frances because it's my mother's middle name or because my parents benefitted from her programs during the Depression is absurd. Clearly Frances was a good person and a devoted Christian and she helped accomplish great things but does that make her a saint? A man who became "a leper with the lepers to gain all to Jesus Christ," is, (IMHO) someone whose love of Christ made him go round the bend and that's what separates saints from good people and reformers. I am happy to entertain arguments to the contrary but not voting based on faulty reasoning! There. Now I feel better.
Of course, voting for saints in a bracket matchup format at all is also on the rather absurd side.....
😉
Thank you, Barbara, for bringing me back to earth. Clearly we're all crazy.
I really do love your idea about "going round the bend out of love for Christ" as a marker of sainthood, though! Really well said, I think....
Rosemarie, this is the second year I have played in (suffered through) Lent Madness. Yes, we're all crazy here. Ash Thursday? Saintly Smackdown? Saintly kitsch? (Just wait, that's really beyond the pale. Really.) It's impossible to choose the more saintly saint. Mental torture. But, the fun part of LM is learning about marvelous, historical people----and reading present day comments (well, sometimes...) and following the entertaining antics of the SEC. Our very own SEC. Wherever they may roam.
I first learned of Fr. Damien some 40 years ago, working in a theological library that had an endowment for collecting works on Christian missions/missionary work. That he gave up his life in the way he did moved me very deeply and still does. I did not know about Francis Perkins until today. Her work is laudable, but I must go with the very saintly Fr. Damien.
The site won't let me vote (my husband got there first!!!) so I need to cast my vote for Damien.
Thanks
Very close race and personally difficult. Frances Perkins's work has contributed immensely to the Kingdom coming in these sometimes contrary yet still United States, and many hands have taken it up. But I met Damien first through the extraordinary defense of his saintly character by one of those "apostate" writers of the century before last, Robert Louis Stevenson. His "Open Letter to the Reverend Doctor Hyde of Honolulu" is a prose masterpiece. Hyde had written private correspondence in which he repeated rumors about Damien, and one or more of Hyde's "friends" published the corrspondence apparently without Hyde's knowledge or consent. As printed the letter claimed that Damien was an ignorant peasant who had gone to Molokai without the permission of his ecclesiastical superiors (!), that he was "impure in his relations with women," and more of that sort. Perhaps Hyde or his friends had been carried away by the spirit of interdenominal strife in the Hawaiian mission field? The published letter fell into Stevenson's hands and he wrote an outraged defense of Damien, praising him as a pioneer who paved the way for the nuns who followed him to Molokai, memorably saying that there wasn't a clean dish or towel in the "good sisters"' wards that "dirty Damien" hadn't cleaned--an unforgettable image and a reminder that Damien's sanctity flowed through the hands of those who took up his work among the lepers, just as many hands took up the work of Frances Perkins. Should it surprise us that sainthood happens in community? Peasant and patrician, today's bracketed saints are truly people's saints, and neither the gates of Hell nor the gatekeepers of ecclesiastical "purity" shall prevail against them.
My vote is for Damien. I heard the story in grade school, that he announced his newly-acquired affliction with leprosy by opening his sermon with: "My brother lepers." Ms. Perkins' work is laudable, but Damien gets my vote.
So, let's see: #1 a good paying job, nice clothes and living in a cosmopolitan area; or #2 a poorly paying job, rough clothes and living at the end of the earth. Hmmm...it would be more difficult for me to follow Fr. Damien's path than Mrs. Perkins' path. So, I vote for Fr. Damien graced with extra strength and courage.
Damien's self sacrifice is inspiring, but Frances Perkins lifted millions of people out of poverty, so she gets my vote.
I may be impossible to have a fair election that includes her name, though. After all, anyone getting SS benefits maybe unduly influenced. 🙂
Keeping a clear head and heart in the halls of power and in the face of hostility, over many years, was not such an easy (or fun) task for Frances. She had a lonely job. How stay focused on what needed to be done, rather than all the imperatives of power and privilege? I imagine this was one reason she went on retreat so frequently with the Sisters of the Poor.
My vote was not against Damien, whose saintliness is very clear, but rather for Frances, whose work changed so many lives. Others tried to accomplish what she did, e.g., banning child labor. She finally did it, decades later.
I also appreciate this chance to vote for a layperson, a woman, and an Episcopalian (is she the only one this year?). These are not reasons to vote against Damien. Just on a personal level, I can relate to her as I am all of the above too.
Necessary caveat: Of course Lent Madness is completely nutty and unfair. And the match-ups are only going to get harder in the next round (at least for me). All of these folks are amazing and their lives worthy of study, thanksgiving, and (perhaps) emulation. Different charisms, different paths. What a blessing to know of all of them.
Tough choice, but Frances got my vote. Despite all the rhetoric slinging and snarky opinions about Social Security (which is only an "entitlement" to those who put money INTO the SocSec system, thank you very much), we also owe Frances for such civilities as the lunch break, 8-hour work days, overtime pay, and other features of the Fair Labor Standards Act. In the long run, she provided more humane conditions for many more people than Damien did.
. . . so this is the new measure of holiness?
After hours of trying to choose, I finally voted for Frances so I could go to sleep. I was truly inspired by both.
Whoops, we almost forgot to vote. The twins woke up this morning yelling, "We forgot to vote for Francis Perkins last night!" So they just did! Glad we could squeeze our vote in before the polls closed. Whew.
I was rooting for Damien! What happened, people of Hawaii? I was sure I'd wake up this morning to find he had won.
After a year of negative comments and bullying, perhaps the people of Hawai'i decided to walk away . . . in a way I wouldn't blame them -- calling them unfair has become a rather tedious refrain of Lent Madness. Teasing is one thing, but it's not funny anymore.
Thank-you Sr. Mary Winifred! I have already made my comment regarding just this matter. Hopefully we can now let the "bad" Hawaii matter rest. Our Bishop may have been over enthusiastic in getting the diocese behind Emma, but hey! it was in the spirit of MADDNESS, which was still just an inane/zany way to learn about the saints. What he did was get many people involved in this "game" who otherwise might not have taken the time to even check it out. (I for one voted for Mary Magdalen last year even though I'm both a citizen of Hawaii and an Episcopalian! ) I'm one of those who was introduced to this in the spirit of playfulness and I still promote it, but I agree, let the Hawaii matter REST already!
I have lost my faith in Big Pineapple
Is this Lent Madness shaping up as the Year of the Woman? Is the voter gender balance skewed? I didn't know Damien, I'm female, I've never been to Hawaii (but I did read the book), I learned the right spelling of the men's and women's names as a school girl by seeing Frances' name in print and I'm sure she's worthy--but I confess I'm disappointed my guy will for now remain in his holy isolation among the company of saints.
One consolation: since he's a relatively recently-canonized RC saint, I bet many people who voted for him here had, like me, never heard about him before.
That's over 2,000 people here alone who maybe heard his name for the first time and (like me) felt immediately drawn to his story. Anyway: I don't know about you, but I'm now part of the (unofficial) cult of Damien of Molokai. 😉
(And that's in real life, not just in Lent Madness....)
Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that with this year's voters, the closer a saint is
to our own time the better chance that saint has of winning (although Hilda of Whitby
did beat Samuel Seabury). While we're on that subject (if I may backtrack a little),
during that particular matchup I kept seeing the statement "I can't vote for Seabury.
He was a Tory!" Perhaps Maple Anglican feels differently. In Canada the Loyalists are considered the Good Guys. There, I said it. Now, on with Lent Madness!
I will vehemently defend my right to vote against a saint if I do not like his of her picture. And tell you about it. BTW, why does more suffering make you more worthy? I see value in impact.
Fr. Damien exposed himself to a deadly disease which he eventually contracted, in order to alleviate the suffering of people he did not know, at a time when most European people regarded non-Europeans as less than totally human. I can think of no one more deserving of the epithet of Saint. That he lost in this poll to a politician is frankly horrifying.