Book review: A special kind of courage

Most people are the product of the culture in which they’re raised; they follow in the footsteps pf parents and family, absorb the traditions of their community. Others seem to have been called to be something extraordinary, unusual, especially gifted and uniquely guided. Such a person was Edith Stein, a woman ahead of her time who became a recognized scholar, a Jewess who became a Carmelite nun, and a martyr who died in Auschwitz.

Oklahoma author Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda has titled her biography “Edith Stein: The Life and Legacy of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.” A title in two pieces is an apt one for this saint whose life was put together from different pieces.

The details of Stein’s early life are taken from her work, “Life in a Jewish Family,” published in 1986 and subtitled “Her Unfinished Autobiographical Account.” Essays that she wrote as a scholar are referenced in Scaperlanda’s book as are Stein’s letters, many of which were written after she entered religious life.

Scaperlanda describes Stein as “a brilliant philosopher who lived and thrived in the intellectual university community of 1910s Germany.” Born in 1891 in Breslau, in what was then Germany, Stein was the youngest of seven surviving children out of 11.

When Edith’s father died, her mother took over the management of the family lumber business and was very successful, no doubt providing Edith with a role model of feminine strength. While the Jewish family was observant, Scaperlanda reports that Edith’s mother “did not exact strict observance.”

In Ch. 3, Scaperlanda provides “A Brief Historical Setting,” explaining the situation of Jews in Germany. She finishes this chapter noting that Hitler was born “only two years before Edith Stein.”

At one point while living with her sister in Hamburg during 1906-07, Stein, at the age 15, became a self-professed atheist, or at least an agnostic. She was not being rebellious or defiant; she simply wanted to pursue truth on her own terms.

At the university, Stein joined the Prussian Society for Women’s Right to Vote. She studied “philosophy, psychology, history and German philology,” Scaperlanda wrote.

“Her entire life was a quest of truth and meaning,” Scaperlanda explains. She eventually obtained a doctorate in philosophy. She was certainly well-read, and it was the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Avila that turned on the light of faith for Stein. She immediately began to study Catholicism and, at age 31, was baptized.

A great deal of Stein’s writing focuses on the role of women. Scaperlanda quotes her as saying “There is no profession that cannot be practiced by women,” and yet she also believed that every woman is called to be a mother in some way or other.

In 1933, the institute where Stein was teaching told her to stop scheduling lectures and to focus instead on research. This was in response to orders by the German secret police, the Gestapo, requiring “Jewish workers in all professions to retire or leave,” Scaperlanda said. The increasingly hostile atmosphere caused Stein to search for true meaning in her life. She found it when she entered the Carmel of Mary, Queen of Peace, in 1933.

This was a shock to Stein’s family, a shock from which they never completely recovered. Stein accepted this as she accepted so much else in her tumultuous life, taking for herself the name Sister Teresia (for Teresa of Avila) Benedicta a Cruce, Latin for “Teresa, Blessed by the Cross.”

Three years after entering Carmel, Stein’s mother died of stomach cancer. Edith’s sister, Rosa, eventually became Catholic and died with her at Auschwitz.

Stein transferred to a Carmel in Holland, hoping to avoid Hitler’s death decrees. Family members fled abroad. Some 700 Dutch Catholics, including 300 nuns and priests were taken to Auschwitz and died there in 1942.

The sisters were taken in August and, while there are few details of her final days, some eyewitnesses have noted that “it was Edith Stein’s complete calm and self-possession that marked her out from the rest of the prisoners. … Edith went among the women like an angel, comforting, helping and consoling them.”

Edith Stein found her courage at the foot of the cross, and the pursuit of its truth was for her a lifelong passion. She was beatified in 1987 and declared a saint by Saint John Paul II in 1998.

 J.E. Helm is a freelance writer for the Sooner Catholic.