Edith Stein and Authentic Femininity
Image Courtesy of Westminster Youth Ministry
By Renee Rasmussen
On Monday April 19, Anscombe club hosted Busch School Professor Dr. Catherine Pakaluk’s talk on Edith Stein’s view of the feminine. This event began with a short discussion on Stein’s life and studies and then shifted to discuss Stein’s views on women and the “feminine soul.”
Stein was raised in a Jewish family in the early 1900s in Germany. In a time where very few women received higher education, Stein herself went to college and studied philosophy and later went to graduate school. Her schooling was interrupted by World War I, so she paused her studies to volunteer as a nurse in the war. She received her Ph.D. in philosophy and then went on to complete a second dissertation. During her time in college, she read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila and became a convert to Catholicism.
Later, she was able to enter a Carmelite covenant in Germany. However, once World War II began, due to her Jewish heritage, she went to a covenant in Belgium to hide. Sadly, she was caught and killed in Auschwitz. However, before her tragic death, Stein was an avid writer and a holy woman. On May 1, 1987, she was beatified by Pope John Paul II and was canonized on October 11, 1998.
Many of her writings were on femininity and what Stein called the “feminine soul.” Pakaluk explained Stein’s understanding of different souls.
“Do you have an inner form that urges your growth in a certain direction? Yes or no? You probably do. Is that inner form urging you in a certain direction? Is it in someway or another shaped by or distinguished by the biological sex that you have? She thought definitely yes,” Pakaluk said.
“Why did she definitely think yes? Because matter doesn’t give rise to anything, or form gives rise to things. Does this mean that she argued that men and women have different souls? Sort of. Is that a Thomsitic principle? No it’s not. How do we make sense out of this? I don’t know, we’re still working on it.”
Pakaluk explained the particular virtues Stein believed a woman’s soul must have.
“She says, ‘The soul of a woman must be expansive and open to all human beings. It must be quiet, so that no small weak flame will be extinguished by stormy ones,’” Pakaluk said.
She also listed the other characteristics Stein believed a woman’s soul should contain: the soul must be clear, empty of itself, and mistress of itself, or in self command.
“What are the parts of the feminine vocation? To be spouse and mother. She thinks women’s souls are made for a special kind of unity, that women find division in life especially difficult. She thinks women in particular can only find their maturity through the activation of their spiritual powers,” Pakaluk said. “She did not think any particular profession or vocation was off limits for women, she thought women could do anything in a certain sense.”
To end the event, Pakaluk discussed how it was impossible to put Stein in a box, since her ideals were so expansive.
“You would think given her life story, that she would be really important for feminists in the 20th century. But she’s not…for her she thinks femininity and masculinity are devalued, but they are devalued on account of our lack of supernatural perspective,” Pakaluk said.
Pakaluk also made a point to explain that Stein believed women had the potential to accomplish a lot more than society would let them but were attempting to go about gaining more rights in the wrong way.
“If women will realize their potential in society, which is what the women’s movement wants, and she wanted to see that. But the caution there was they have to do this through a path of sanctification not through a path of organizing.”
Overall, Edith Stein remains a figure whose ideals are still being understood through a modern lense. Her writings and ideals shed a great light on women, femininity, and vocations.
This event was well attended. If you are interested in attending more events like this, or in joining the Anscombe club, visit the Nest to learn more.
