As I browsed the news for feminist-inspired stories, I came across several editorials where the authors reflected on precisely how they came about to realize and embrace their feminist identities. Many women reflected on how they have had to defend their feminist status in light of their religious affiliations; others reflected on how they understand the modern idea of a feminist to greatly stray from the meaning of "feminist" at the liberation movement's inception. While I could ramble about my own feminist struggles, I feel like this blog does most of that for me. So, in honor of the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day (March 8), I am simply going to share the details of another woman whose life journey I find to bee oozing with feminism, femininity, and faith (three parts of my own life that I find to be inseparable and integral to my personality and perspective). Understanding the struggles and lives of preceding women can be a source of strength and knowledge for ladies today trying to sort out their ideals and determining what to do next.
Edith Stein's life and works are truly inspirational and thought-provoking, and I believe she can serve as a source of strength to all young ladies today.
Having grown up in a strictly Jewish household, Edith Stein had limited knowledge of other religions, especially Christianity. She first found Christianity appealing in 1921 while vacationing in Bavaria, when she found and read The Life of St. Teresa of Avila at a friend’s home. Following this discovery, Stein acquired a catechism, a missal, and a desire to attend the Mass. After this endeavor into Catholicism, Stein asked to be baptized on January 22, 1922, and made her First Holy Communion immediately following her baptism, all without her mother knowing. Of course, when Stein’s mother learned of her conversion, it brought her great despair. However, Stein stood by her faith and notably prayed for her family’s conversion, understanding her Catholicism simply as her Judaism evolving to exist on a different faith plane. Stein profoundly understood her conversion as a personal revelation that would help bring the light of truth, Christ’s light, to her family.
Stein’s conversion represents great courage and faith on her part. Having grown up in a strictly Orthodox Jewish household and particularly admiring her mother, it was an extremely significant decision to convert to Christianity. At the time of her conversion, Stein simultaneously felt sorrow for seemingly betraying her family and joy that she was growing in deeper relationship with Christ; amazingly, Stein had the strength to focus on this joy and turned her sorrow into prayers for her family’s conversion and acceptance. Especially as a female deciding to convert to Catholicism, Stein had to feel a deep awareness that her conversion could potentially yield her ostracism from both her family and the community in which she was raised. However, Stein embraced her new faith as an opportunity to grow in relationship with Christ and with others. Her devotion and love for Christ, despite the challenges her conversion and femininity promised, reveal her as a woman who sincerely embraced her faith as a woman of Christ. Hence, Stein’s Catholic feminism showed itself from the beginning of her Christian faith.
Stein’s later writings focusing on the role of women in society exemplify this female strength and her desire to empower other women to more fully embrace themselves as women. Following her conversion, Stein taught German literature at a girl’s college at the Dominican convent at Speyer as a lay teacher. She ultimately became a popular lecturer and received a prominent place in German Catholic teaching especially with respect to the topics of women in society, the family, and in relation to men. In the early 1920s, Stein’s clear oratory and impressive writing put her in place to lead the Catholic women’s movement in Germany. In April 1928, Stein gave her first public address on the role of Catholic women at a congress of the Association of Bavarian Catholic Women teachers, entitled “The Significance of Woman’s Intrinsic Value in National Life.” Later, at another conference in 1931 at the Salzburg Academy, Stein spoke on “The Ethos of Women’s Professions." As made clear in Stein’s public addressing of issues pertaining to women’s role in the Church and society, she constantly pressed to enhance the life of women by discussing their importance, despite whatever the policies of institutions, like universities, may have been.
Interestingly, following these few years of active intellectual life and speaking for the Catholic women’s movement, Stein’s faith led her to make a dramatic change in her life. In 1932, while holding a professional position at Münster University, Stein decided to enter the Carmelite monastery with the grace of her spiritual director. On April 15, 1934, she received the habit of the Carmelites and the name Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross . Indubitably, Stein’s attraction to the Carmelites initiated at the time of her conversion, which was clearly motivated by her reading of St. Teresa of Ávila’s autobiography. It seems that despite her success at publicly sharing her intellectual life, the silence of Ávila’s faith that drew her to Catholicism remained the most enriching part of her spiritual life. As with her conversion to Christianity, Stein’s devotion to God and her attention to the Holy Spirit led her to make drastic changes in her life.
While in the monastery, Sr. Teresa Benedicta adapted to the cloistered, monastic life of the Carmels, but beginning in the late 1930s, she began to again engage in philosophical writing with the blessing of her Mother. Tragically, Sr. Teresa Benedicta’s writings were not all completed. On July 26, 1942, Sr. Teresa Benedicta and her biological sister Rosa, who converted to Catholicism and was a worker at the Carmelite Monastery after their mother passed, were arrested at the Carmelite convent in Echt and led away by the Gestapo. Records indicate that Sr. Teresa Benedicta and her sister Rosa were killed in a gas chamber at Auschwitz on August 9, 1942. The work Sr. Teresa Benedicta was writing at the time of her death, The Science of the Cross, was never completed.
Sr. Teresa Benedicta took her calling to the monastic life as a way of more profoundly embracing her personal identity as a woman and engaging in a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. She strove to love more fully as she engaged in the Carmel tradition of silence, and she later strove to reach out to humanity as she once again engaged in her intellectual life by producing philosophical reflections. Throughout her vexations prior to death at the hands of the Gestapo, she is recognized for her silence—she suffered for people in a redemptory silence. Drawing on Carmelite spirituality and her then-recent reflections on the mystical experiences of St. John of the Cross, Sr. Teresa Benedicta found comfort in meditations and an embracing of the suffering she experienced. Arguably, she took her suffering as a way of redeeming herself before her Lord not only for her own sake, but also for the sake of all of humanity. At her death, she embraced her understanding women’s vocation as to bring “true humanity in oneself and in others to development” more fully than ever before.
Throughout Sr. Teresa Benedicta’s life, she lived to serve the Lord and all people, as her philosophical writings on women clearly reflect. Despite the many challenges she faced during her life, due to both her Jewish ethnicity and her place as a female intellectual, Sr. Teresa Benedicta constantly reached out to share divine and human love with the world. In a sense, Sr. Teresa Benedicta illuminated Christ’s presence during a period of distinctive darkness in Germany. As a woman of profound faith who desired to share her knowledge and faith with others, she illustrated the importance of women in the world and lived a life that encouraged women to embrace their singular dignity within the community. Undoubtedly, she was a Catholic feminist in the truest sense. Henry Bordeaux beautifully reflects on her life,
She represents all of those converts from Judaism who freely accepted martyrdom and thus became a bridge between Christians and Jews. She is the type of Christian scholar who was willing to give up the life of learning along with everything else for the sake of Christ. In the life of contemplation, she reached new heights of wisdom, which, later on when she was ordered to take up her philosophical work again, were reflected in her writings. As a woman she appropriately indicates the paths with which the Christian woman, while remaining both genuinely feminine and truly Christian, may tread (vii).
It is through encouraging such reflection on Catholicism and on her life that Sr. Teresa Benedicta’s Catholic feminism reveals its profundity. Her life and spirituality are beautiful examples of feminine faith that exemplify precisely how women of faith at any point in history can, despite whatever challenges, bring Christ’s light to the world. Likewise, Sr. Teresa Benedicta’s life journey illuminates the beauty of femininity to all women today. Her devotion to the Church, God, her feminine identity, and her family resulted in an outstanding life and wonderful texts that illustrate her distinctive feminist identity and exemplify the unique gifts of female strength to all women.
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