-
An Anti-totalitarian Saint: The Canonization of Edith Stein
- Journal of the History of Ideas
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Volume 79, Number 3, July 2018
- pp. 481-495
- 10.1353/jhi.2018.0029
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
ABSTRACT:
This essay explores the intellectual origins of Edith Stein’s canonization. In the years of the early Cold War, when Christians on both sides of the Atlantic proclaimed “Judeo-Christian civilization” to be the greatest bulwark against totalitarianism in both its Nazi and Soviet guises, Stein became a powerful anti-totalitarian symbol. During the 1980s, a new Pope, John Paul II, revived the memory of Stein and linked it to his own rich understanding of Judeo-Christian civilization as a set of values opposed to both Nazism and Communism. Thus, Edith Stein became an icon of anti-totalitarianism in an age of Holocaust memory.