Exploring Edith Stein

GARDNER –A new priest and his listeners drew inspiration from the life and philosophy of a Holocaust martyr he wrote a book about.
Father Thiago Ibiapina, associate pastor of Annunciation Parish, gave a PowerPoint presentation about Edith Stein on Aug. 8 in the parish’s Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Church hall. About 60 people, including the pastor, Father Stephen E. Lundrigan, attended.
Among reasons audience members gave for coming were interest in Jews, saints, and to learn.
A Jew turned atheist, Edith Stein taught philosophy, converted to the Catholic Church and became a Carmelite nun called Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She was killed in the gas chamber in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1942 and canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1998.
In his talk, Father Ibiapina noted that her feast day was the next day, Aug. 9, the date she was killed. He spoke of asking for her intercession and added, “Say a prayer for all ofthem who died” in the Holocaust.
Father Ibiapina was ordained a priest for the Worcester Diocese June 18. While a seminarian in his native Brazil, he became fascinated with Edith Stein, as she is still commonly called. From 2012-2015 he participated in a study group about Edith Stein at the Federal University of Ceará in Brazil.Then, while he was a seminarian in the United States, he took an online, one-year seminar about her spirituality through the Pontifical Catholic University in Brazil, earning a certificate in 2020.
His book, “Spirit: An Analysis of the Human Person according to Edith Stein,” was published in Portuguese in 2017 in Rio de Janeiro and he hopes to translate it into English.
He also had articles about Edith Stein published in philosophical magazines and gave talks about her to Brazilians in the Worcester Diocese, he said.He told The Catholic Free Press that he became interested in Edith Stein because of his fascination with Pope John Paul II, whose writings he read and who was influenced by her writings. Some scholars consider them both teachers of phenomenology, he said. Father Ibiapina described phenomenology as a method of discovering the truth about things by analyzing them as they are, before interpreting them. To do this, the phenomenologist sets aside his or her experiences, assumptions and imagination. Father Ibiapina likened this to psychologists and confessors who listen to people before giving advice.
Some people do not think; they just follow someone who gives a speech, he said. He told listeners he was not going to give them answers but teach them how to think. If they do the work of thinking, they will stay with God, not go with the flow of society, he said.
Parishioner Brian LaRoche expressed appreciation for this approach. He told The Catholic Free Press about coming to see the importance of analyzing a situation before jumping to a conclusion or commenting on it. Even if you know something about a topic, it’s good to get a different perspective, he said. He said he hadn’t known about Edith Stein. But after seeing a display of relics at the parish, he became interested in saints. He praised Father Ibiapina for his presentation and humor. (The priest got listeners laughing as he joked about trying to impress them with his knowledge and a picture of his book.)
“I thought he was very humorous; I like his style,” said Ann Murphy, of St. Denis Parish in Ashburnham. She said the Holocaust is a tough topic and Edith Stein’s life was difficult.
“We’re living in some tough times now,” Mrs. Murphy said. “Will I be strong” –like Edith Stein and Maximilian Kolbe (another saint of Auschwitz) and St. John Paul II?
“Some good people came through that time period,” Mrs. Murphy said. And today there are saints; we just don’t know who they are, she said.
She shared an Edith Stein quote she displays in her office: “Do not accept anything as the truth if it lacks love. And do not accept anything as love which lacks truth. One without the other becomes a destructive lie.”
Mrs. Murphy said she finds Edith Stein interesting and likes converts’ stories, and it was “a big thing” that this convert came from Judaism.
“I was interested (in attending) because I do appreciate the Jewish people,” said Louise Morgenstern, of Annunciation Parish. She said her husband likes to read about the Jewish religion, and some people think his last name is Jewish.Father Ibiapina said Edith Stein saw many Catholics being silent about the Holocaust, but she proclaimed that she was a daughter of Israel and never stopped being a Jew, even after converting.
She is crucial for the Church today, he said, explaining, “We don’t encounter a lot of Catholic philosophers.” He said usually Catholics study philosophers from centuries ago, such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, but she lived in the 20th century.
Also important is that she was a very intelligent woman, a feminist ofher time who fought for the right to teach university students as a woman, Father Ibiapina said. He said Pope John Paul II drew from her understanding of what it means to be a woman for his 1988 apostolic letter about the “Dignity and Vocation of Women” (Mulieris Dignitatem).
“She’s a very complex figure,” Father Ibiapina said. In conflict with her legalistic Jewish upbringing, she became an agnostic and later an atheist, but was fascinated by things about Christianity she learned from classmates and philosophers. Our lives too can be powerful witnesses to non-Christians, he said.
“My fascination is because she has been this complex and changing figure, and I like that,” he said. “She said every day is achance for a new beginning. That’s hope. It is aboutsurrender to the providence of God. You are not in charge. He is in charge.”