Edith Stein
Edith Stein, OCD (religious name: Teresa Benedicta of the Cross; 12 October 1891 – 9 August 1942) was a German Jewish philosopher who converted to Catholicism and became a Discalced Carmelite nun. She is canonized as a martyr and saint of the Catholic Church; she is also one of six patron saints of Europe.
Teresia Benedicta a Cruce
12 October 1891
9 August 1942 (aged 50)
German
- On the Problem of Empathy
- Finite and Eternal Being
- Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities
- The Science of the Cross
University of Freiburg (1916–1918)
Das Einfühlungsproblem in seiner historischen Entwicklung und in phänomenologischer Betrachtung (The Empathy Problem as it Developed Historically and Considered Phenomenologically) (1916)
- Spirituality of the Christian woman
- Phenomenological empathy
She was born into an observant Jewish family, but had become an agnostic by her teenage years.[5] Moved by the tragedies of World War I, in 1915, she took lessons to become a nursing assistant and worked in an infectious diseases hospital. After completing her doctoral thesis at the University of Freiburg in 1916, she obtained an assistantship there to Edmund Husserl.[6]
From reading the life of the reformer of the Carmelites, Teresa of Ávila,[7] Edith Stein was drawn to the Christian faith. She was baptized on 1 January 1922 into the Catholic Church. At that point, she wanted to become a Discalced Carmelite nun but was dissuaded by her spiritual mentor, the archabbot of Beuron, Raphael Walzer OSB. She then taught at a Catholic school of education in Speyer. As a result of the requirement of an "Aryan certificate" for civil servants promulgated by the Nazi government in April 1933 as part of its Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, she had to quit her teaching position.
Edith Stein was admitted as a postulant to the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Cologne on 14 October, on the first vespers of the feast of Saint Teresa of Ávila, and received the religious habit as a novice in April 1934, taking the religious name Teresia Benedicta a Cruce (Teresia in remembrance of Teresa of Ávila, Benedicta in honour of Benedict of Nursia). She made her temporary vows on 21 April 1935, and her perpetual vows on 21 April 1938.
The same year, Teresa Benedicta a Cruce and her biological sister Rosa, by then also a convert and an extern (tertiary of the order, who would handle the community's needs outside the monastery), were sent to the Carmelite monastery in Echt, Netherlands, for their safety. In response to the pastoral letter from the Dutch bishops on 26 July 1942, in which they made the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis a central theme, all baptized Catholics of Jewish origin (according to police reports, 244 people) were arrested by the Gestapo on the following Sunday, 2 August 1942. They were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and were murdered in the Birkenau gas chambers on 9 August 1942.
Teresia Benedicta a Cruce
1 May 1987, Cologne, Germany by Pope John Paul II
11 October 1998, Vatican City by Pope John Paul II
9 August
Discalced Carmelite nun's habit (sometimes with a Yellow badge), cross, a book or scroll with Hebrew letters, burning bush, martyr's palm
Europe; loss of parents; converted Jews; martyrs;
World Youth Day[25]
Controversy as to the cause of her murder[edit]
The beatification of Teresa Benedicta as a martyr generated criticism. Critics argued that she was murdered because she was Jewish by birth, rather than for her Christian faith,[39] and that, in the words of Daniel Polish, the beatification seemed to "carry the tacit message encouraging conversionary activities" because "official discussion of the beatification seemed to make a point of conjoining Stein's Catholic faith with her death with 'fellow Jews' in Auschwitz."[40][41] The position of the Catholic Church is that Teresa Benedicta also died because of the Dutch episcopacy's public condemnation of Nazi racism in 1942; in other words, that she died because of the moral teaching of the church and is thus a true martyr.[8][42]
