Sainthood for Jewish Convert Stirs Debate

The Vatican’s decision to bestow sainthood Sunday on Edith Stein, a Jewish-born Catholic nun executed by the Nazis in 1942, has disturbed some U.S. Jewish thinkers, who are concerned about the prospect of heightened veneration of Stein as a Holocaust martyr.

Baltimore Cardinal William Keeler, who directs the U.S. Catholic office for Jewish relations, this week urged that the church be sensitive to the Jewish legal view that Stein abandoned her Judaic identity by adopting a new faith in 1922.

But because Stein went to the gas chamber saying she was dying for “her people”--and the Catholic Church, in effect, is glorifying “a public apostate” from Judaism--the canonization presents difficulties for Jewish-Catholic reconciliation, said Zev Garber of Los Angeles Valley College, one of three American Jewish scholars whose writings were cited in Keeler’s memo.

Stein felt she never ceased to be a Jew, said Keeler.

“As a church, we cannot pretend that she died as anything other than one of 6 million Jews murdered in the Shoah [Holocaust],” Keeler wrote.

He reported happily that in the 11 years since the church elevated her to the status of Blessed Edith Stein, her advance toward sainthood has not inspired any organized Catholic movement to use her to proselytize Jews.

Thus, “her intellectual and spiritual journey, from which Catholics have much to learn, is presented as . . . a model for Catholics, not a model for Jews,” the cardinal said.

Even as Catholic officials reiterated their respect for Judaism, however, a spokesman for the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles said Stein’s canonization “is not a positive gesture.”

And some of her California relatives who will be at the Vatican City ceremonies Sunday say they are attending with a mixture of pride and discomfort.

A nephew of Stein, Ernst Biberstein of Davis, and his son, Michael of San Diego, together with their wives praised Pope John Paul II’s steps against anti-Semitism, but expressed disappointment with the Nazi-era silence of Pope Pius XII on Jewish persecution.

In 1933, Stein, a philosophy student and teacher, became a cloistered Carmelite nun in Cologne, Germany, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She soon appealed to Pius XII to speak out against the Nazis, but she received only a papal blessing for her and her family.

Two Viewpoints on Stein’s Death Seen

While in Holland, she was arrested in 1942 with 200 other Catholics who were at least part Jewish and sent to the Auschwitz death camp in reprisal for the Dutch Catholic bishops’ criticism of Nazi persecution of Jews.

When the deportation order came, accounts say, Stein told her sister Rosa, who had also joined the church, “Come, Rosa. We are going for our people.”

In his book on the Holocaust published in 1995 and quoted by Keeler, Garber said obstacles to Catholic-Jewish reconciliation derive from Stein’s own words “and the church’s understanding of her martyrdom.”

Garber, a professor of Jewish studies at the community college in Van Nuys, added in an interview that “dying ‘for our people’ can be seen as a heroic act, or it can be seen as Christlike.”

In other words, her courageous acceptance of death could be regarded in strictly human terms or viewed theologically as a Jew taking on the sins of others, emulating the central sacrifice of Christ.

Keeler’s advisory suggested that attempts should be made not so much to resolve this “most delicate matter” but to clarify it--by discussing different religious explanations that Christianity and Judaism have for suffering and redemption, an approach that he credited Garber with suggesting.

Critics of the Stein canonization also cite her spiritual last will and testament, required of Carmelite nuns, in which she offered her life for “the sins of the unbelieving people so the Lord will be accepted by his own.”

Eugene Fisher, director of Catholic-Jewish relations for the U.S. bishops in Washington, D.C., said those words were more a reflection of old church language “when there was a prayer for conversion of unbelieving Jews in the Good Friday liturgy.” Because that prayer created misunderstandings, the Second Vatican Council removed it in the 1960s, Fisher noted.

Nearly 100 Relatives to Attend Ceremonies

Likewise, Carmelite Sister Josephine Koeppel, who has translated Stein’s letters and books, including her “Life in a Jewish Family,” said that “everybody talked that way” in the 1930s.

“It was devotional language we were so used to repeating,” said Koeppel, who is based at the Carmelite Monastery in Elysburg, Pa.

“Unlike many converts, Edith Stein never tried to convince anyone else to do what she did,” Koeppel said. “Her sister, Rosa, did, but it was her own idea.” Of the Stein family’s seven children, just three survived the Holocaust.

Only about 20 relatives attended the 1987 beatification rites for Stein at the Vatican--the ceremony that left her one step short of sainthood. “Half of them were there with great reservations, but since then they understand more,” Koeppel said.

Nearly 100 relatives, including the Bibersteins of Davis and San Diego, plan to attend this weekend’s ceremonies. The Bibersteins wrote an “open letter” to John Paul, criticizing not only Pope Pius’ silence but also the Vatican’s long-awaited statement this year on the Holocaust that declined to fault the church’s passive wartime stance.

But because of an expected audience with John Paul, whom they praised for his “good will toward the Jewish people,” the Bibersteins said they hope to present the pontiff a drawing by family friend Peter Loesser of Santa Monica of the Stein family’s synagogue in old Breslau, now Wroclaw, Poland.

Although Edith Stein was not a religious Jew and moved from Breslau after her teen years, the large, ornate Neue Synagogue there was the center of religious life for Loesser and the Steins, according to the Bibersteins’ letter.

“The synagogue we belonged to was a liberal synagogue; it was not Orthodox despite what some reports say,” said Ernst Biberstein’s sister, Susanne Batzdorff, who lives in Santa Rosa, Calif. The building was destroyed in November 1938 during the infamous Kristallnacht assault by Nazi mobs on German synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses.

“We saw it being burned,” she said. “The next day they dynamited what was left of it.”

Batzdorff, now 77, recently published a book, “Aunt Edith, the Jewish Heritage of a Catholic Saint,” and contributed translations to “Never Forget,” collected remembrances of Stein published by the Carmelite order.

‘We Didn’t Want to Be Confrontational’

Before leaving for Rome this week, Batzdorff said she and her husband decided against signing the Bibersteins’ open letter. “What they are bringing up has validity, but we felt we didn’t want to be confrontational in the light of the Jewish-Catholic dialogue,” she said.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which does not shy away from confrontation on issues of anti-Semitism, has not confined its criticism to the Stein canonization. Far worse, said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the center, is a series of three “fast-track moves” toward sainthood undertaken by the pope, including the Stein canonization.

Earlier this month, John Paul presided over the beatification of Alojzije Stepinac, a Croatian cardinal accused by the Wiesenthal Center and others of collaboration with a Nazi-backed government.

And Pius XII--the wartime pope--has been proposed for veneration. “That one will cause the greatest controversy, and not just among Jewish people,” Cooper said.

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