#St. Edith Stein

[struckbylightningorsomething]

It is not a question here of a sovereignty of man over woman. She is named as companion and helpmate, and it is said of man that he will cling to her and that both are to become one flesh. This signifies that we are to consider the life of the initial human pair as the most intimate community of love, that their faculties were in perfect harmony as within one single being; likewise, before the Fall, all faculties in each individual were in perfect harmony, senses and spirit in right relation with no possibility of conflict. For this reason, they were also incapable of inordinate desire for one another. This is revealed in the words “They were naked and were not ashamed.”

Edith Stein. The Separate Vocations of Man and Woman According to Nature and Grace

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINT OF THE DAY (August 9)

On August 9, the Catholic Church remembers St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, also known as St. Edith Stein.

St. Teresa converted from Judaism to Catholicism in the course of her work as a philosopher and later entered the Carmelite Order.

She died in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz in 1942.

Edith Stein was born on 12 October 1891 – a date that coincided with her family's celebration of Yom Kippur, the Jewish “day of atonement.”

Edith's father died when she was just two years old, and she gave up the practice of her Jewish faith as an adolescent.

As a young woman with profound intellectual gifts, Edith gravitated toward the study of philosophy and became a pupil of the renowned professor Edmund Husserl in 1913.

Through her studies, the non-religious Edith met several Christians whose intellectual and spiritual lives she admired.

After earning her degree with the highest honors from Gottingen University in 1915, she served as a nurse in an Austrian field hospital during World War I.

She returned to academic work in 1916, earning her doctorate after writing a highly-regarded thesis on the phenomenon of empathy.

She remained interested in the idea of religious commitment but had not yet made such a commitment herself.

In 1921, while visiting friends, Edith spent an entire night reading the autobiography of the 16th-century Carmelite nun St. Teresa of Avila.

“When I had finished the book,” she later recalled, “I said to myself: This is the truth.”

She was baptized into the Catholic Church on the first day of January 1922.

Edith intended to join the Carmelites immediately after her conversion but would ultimately have to wait another 11 years before taking this step.

Instead, she taught at a Dominican school and gave numerous public lectures on women's issues.

In 1931, she spent her time writing a study of St. Thomas Aquinas and took a university teaching position in 1932.

In 1933, the rise of Nazism, combined with Edith's Jewish ethnicity, put an end to her teaching career.

After a painful parting with her mother, who did not understand her Christian conversion, she entered a Carmelite convent in 1934, taking the name “Teresa Benedicta of the Cross” as a symbol of her acceptance of suffering.

“I felt,” she wrote, “that those who understood the Cross of Christ should take upon themselves on everybody's behalf.”

She saw it as her vocation “to intercede with God for everyone, but she prayed especially for the Jews of Germany whose tragic fate was becoming clear."

“I ask the Lord to accept my life and my death,” she wrote in 1939, “so that the Lord will be accepted by his people and that his kingdom may come in glory, for the salvation of Germany and the peace of the world.”

After completing her final work, a study of St. John of the Cross entitled “The Science of the Cross,” Teresa Benedicta was arrested along with her sister Rosa (who had also become a Catholic) and the members of her religious community on 7 August 1942.

The arrests came in retaliation against a protest letter by the Dutch Bishops, decrying the Nazi treatment of Jews.

Teresa Benedicta of the Cross died in the concentration camp at Auschwitz on 9 August 1942.

Pope John Paul II beatified her as a martyr on 1 May 1987 and then canonized 11 years later on 11 October 1998.

She is one of the six patron saints of Europe, together with Benedict of Nursia, Cyril and Methodius, Bridget of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena.

[eternal-echoes]

“Our neighbor’s spiritual need transcends every commandment. Everything else we do is a means to an end. But love is an end already, since God is love.”

- St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

[catholicsaintquotes33ad]

[portraitsofsaints]

Saint Edith Stein

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

1891 - 1942

Feast Day: August 9

Patronage: Europeans, students, professors, philosophers, against the death of parents, for conversion to the fullness of the faith, for courage in living out the faith.

Edith Stein was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and nun. Born into a devout German Jewish family, Edith Stein has baptized a Roman Catholic on January 1, 1922. In 1934 she entered the Carmelite Convent, where she took the name of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.  In 1942 she was caught by the Gestapo, arrested wearing her habit and killed within weeks in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

[pamphletstoinspire]

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross - (Edith Stein) Feast Day: August 9

[catholic-saint-tournament]

Modern Saint Bracket Announcement

Instead of waiting until Sunday, the modern bracket will open immediately after the post-schism bracket is over. This is the modern bracket, which will be followed by a final four, and then there will be even MORE polls (losers' brackets, Marian apparitions, we're going all summer baby.)

Catholic Saint Tournament Modern Bracket Round 1 Pairings:

St Therese of Lisieux vs St Elizabeth Ann Seton

St Padre Pio (of Pietrelcina) vs St Charles de Foucauld

St Maximilian Kolbe vs St Benilde Romancon

St John Bosco vs St John Neumann

St Mother Teresa (of Calcutta) vs St Arnold Janssen

St Jacinta Marto vs St Edith Stein

St Maria Goretti vs St Marianne Cope

St Charles Lwanga (& co) vs St John Vianney

St Oscar Romero vs St Josemaria Escriva

St Bernadette vs St Damian of Molokai

St Faustina vs St Catherine Laboure

St Mary MacKillop vs St Katharine Drexel

St Gemma Galgani vs St Frances Xavier Cabrini

St John Henry Cardinal Newman vs Pope St John Paul II

Pope St John XXIII vs St Mark Ji Tianxiang

St Francisco Marto vs Sts Louis & Zelie Martin (package deal)

You can still submit nominations for beatified folks, propaganda for your favorite saints, or other thoughts in the ask box! Or suggestions for future polls, questions, etc.

May the best saint win!

[tomyfellowplutonians]

Source.

[proud-spaniard]

Saint Edith Stein

[siamkram]

[struckbylightningorsomething]

“But no helpmate corresponding to him was found for Adam.” 5 The Hebrew expression used in this passage is barely translatable 6—Eser kenegdo— which literally means “a helper as if vis-à-vis to him.” One can think here of a mirror in which man is able to look upon his own nature. The translators who speak of a “helpmate suitable to him” perceive it in this way. But one can also think of a counterpart, a pendant, so that, indeed, they do resemble each other, yet not entirely, but rather, that they complement each other as one hand does the other.

Edith Stein. The Separate Vocations of Man and Woman According to Nature and Grace

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINT OF THE DAY (August 9)

On August 9, the Catholic Church remembers St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, also known as St. Edith Stein.

St. Teresa converted from Judaism to Catholicism in the course of her work as a philosopher and later entered the Carmelite Order.

She died in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz in 1942.

Edith Stein was born on 12 October 1891 — a date that coincided with her family's celebration of Yom Kippur, the Jewish “day of atonement.”

Edith's father died when she was just two years old, and she gave up the practice of her Jewish faith as an adolescent.

As a young woman with profound intellectual gifts, Edith gravitated toward the study of philosophy and became a pupil of the renowned professor Edmund Husserl in 1913.

Through her studies, the non-religious Edith met several Christians whose intellectual and spiritual lives she admired.

After earning her degree with the highest honors from Gottingen University in 1915, she served as a nurse in an Austrian field hospital during World War I.

She returned to academic work in 1916, earning her doctorate after writing a highly-regarded thesis on the phenomenon of empathy.

She remained interested in the idea of religious commitment but had not yet made such a commitment herself.

In 1921, while visiting friends, Edith spent an entire night reading the autobiography of the 16th-century Carmelite nun, St. Teresa of Avila.

“When I had finished the book,” she later recalled, “I said to myself: This is the truth.”

She was baptized into the Catholic Church on the first day of January 1922.

Edith intended to join the Carmelites immediately after her conversion but would ultimately have to wait another 11 years before taking this step.

Instead, she taught at a Dominican school and gave numerous public lectures on women's issues.

She spent 1931 writing a study of St. Thomas Aquinas and took a university teaching position in 1932.

In 1933, the rise of Nazism, combined with Edith's Jewish ethnicity, put an end to her teaching career.

After a painful parting with her mother, who did not understand her Christian conversion, she entered a Carmelite convent in 1934, taking the name “Teresa Benedicta of the Cross” as a symbol of her acceptance of suffering.

“I felt,” she wrote, “that those who understood the Cross of Christ should take upon themselves on everybody's behalf.”

She saw it as her vocation “to intercede with God for everyone,” but she prayed especially for the Jews of Germany whose tragic fate was becoming clear.

“I ask the Lord to accept my life and my death,” she wrote in 1939, “so that the Lord will be accepted by his people and that his kingdom may come in glory, for the salvation of Germany and the peace of the world.”

After completing her final work, a study of St. John of the Cross entitled “The Science of the Cross,” Teresa Benedicta was arrested, along with her sister Rosa (who had also become a Catholic) and the members of her religious community, on 7 August 1942.

The arrests came in retaliation against a protest letter by the Dutch Bishops, decrying the Nazi treatment of Jews.

Teresa Benedicta of the Cross died in the concentration camp at Auschwitz on 9 August 1942.

Pope John Paul II beatified her on 1 May 1987 and canonized on 11 October 1998.

She is one of the six patron saints of Europe, together with Benedict of Nursia, Cyril and Methodius, Bridget of Sweden, and Catherine of Siena.

[princesssarisa]

Opera on YouTube

I've shared links to complete opera performances before, but I love to share them, so I thought I'd make a few masterposts.

These list are by no means the only complete filmed performances of these operas on YouTube, but I decided that ten links for each opera was enough for now.

By the way, some of the subtitles are just a part of the video, while others require you to click CC to see them.

Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)

Hamburg Philharmonic State Opera, 1971 (Nicolai Gedda, Edith Mathis, William Workman, Christina Deutekom, Hans Sotin; conducted by Horst Stein; English subtitles)

Ingmar Bergman film, 1975 (Josef Köstlinger, Irma Urrila, Håkan Hagegård, Birgit Nordin, Ulrik Cold; conducted by Eric Ericson; sung in Swedish; English subtitles)

Salzburg Festival, 1982 (Peter Schreier, Ileana Cotrubas, Christian Bösch, Edita Gruberova, Martti Talvela; conducted by James Levine; Japanese subtitles)

Bavarian State Opera, 1983 (Francisco Araiza, Lucia Popp, Wolfgang Brendel, Edita Gruberova, Kurt Moll; conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch; English subtitles)

Metropolitan Opera, 1991 (Francisco Araiza, Kathleen Battle, Manfred Hemm, Luciana Serra, Kurt Moll; conducted by James Levine; English subtitles)

Paris Opera, 2001 (Piotr Beczala, Dorothea Röschmann, Detlef Roth, Desirée Rancatore, Matti Salminen; conducted by Ivan Fischer; no subtitles)

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 2003 (Will Hartman, Dorothea Röschmann, Simon Keenlyside, Diana Damrau, Franz Josef Selig; conducted by Colin Davis; no subtitles) – Act I, Act II

La Monnaie, Brussels, 2005 (Topi Lehtipuu, Sophie Karthäuser, Stephan Loger, Ana Camelia Stefanescu, Harry Peeters; conducted by René Jacobs; French subtitles)

Kenneth Branagh film, 2006 (Joseph Kaiser, Amy Carson, Benjamin Jay Davis, Lyubov Petrova, René Pape; conducted by James Conlon; sung in English)

San Francisco Opera, 2010 (Piotr Beczala, Dina Kuznetsoca, Christopher Maltman, Erika Miklósa, Georg Zeppenfeld; conducted by Donald Runnicles; English subtitles)

La Traviata

Mario Lanfrachi studio film, 1968 (Anna Moffo, Franco Bonisolli, Gino Bechi; conducted by Giuseppe Patané; English subtitles)

Glyndebourne Festival Opera, 1987 (Marie McLaughlin, Walter MacNeil, Brent Ellis; conducted by Bernard Haitink; Italian and Portuguese subtitles)

Teatro alla Scala, 1992 (Tiziana Fabbricini, Roberto Alagna, Paolo Coni; conducted by Riccardo Muti; English subtitles)

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 1994 (Angela Gheorghiu, Frank Lopardo, Leo Nucci; conducted by Georg Solti; Spanish subtitles)

Teatro Giuseppe Verdi, 2003 (Stefania Bonfadelli, Scott Piper, Renato Bruson; conducted by Plácido Domingo; Spanish subtitles)

Salzburg Festival, 2005 (Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazón, Thomas Hampson; conducted by Carlo Rizzi; no subtitles)

Los Angeles Opera, 2006 (Renée Fleming, Rolando Villazón, Renato Bruson; conducted by James Conlon; English subtitles)

Opera Festival St. Margarethen, 2008 (Kristiane Kaiser, Jean-Francois Borras, Georg Tichy; conducted by Ernst Märzendorfer; English subtitles)

Teatro Real di Madrid, 2015 (Ermonela Jaho, Francesco Demuro, Juan Jesús Rodríguez; conducted by Renato Palumbo; English subtitles)

Teatro Massimo, 2023 (Nino Machiadze, Saimir Pirgu, Roberto Frontali; conducted by Carlo Goldstein; no subtitles)

Carmen

Herbert von Karajan studio film, 1967 (Grace Bumbry, Jon Vickers; conducted by Herbert von Karajan; English subtitles)

Vienna State Opera, 1978 (Elena Obraztsova, Plácido Domingo; conducted by Carlos Kleiber; English Subtitles)

Francisco Rosi film, 1982 (Julia Migenes, Plácido Domingo; conducted by Lorin Maazel; English subtitles)

Metropolitan Opera, 1987 (Agnes Baltsa, José Carreras; conducted by James Levine; English subtitles)

London Earls Court Arena, 1989 (Maria Ewing, Jacque Trussel; conducted by Jaques Delacote; English subtitles)

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 1991 (Maria Ewing, Luis Lima; conducted by Zubin Mehta; English subtitles) – Acts I and II, Acts III and IV

Arena di Verona, 2003 (Marina Domashenko, Marco Berti; conducted by Alain Lombard; Italian subtitles)

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 2006 (Anna Caterina Antonacci, Jonas Kaufmann; conducted by Antonio Pappano; English subtitles) – Acts I and II, Acts III and IV

Metropolitan Opera, 2010 (Elina Garanca, Roberto Alagna; conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin; English subtitles) – Acts I and II, Acts III and IV

Opéra-Comique, 2023 (Gaëlle Arquez, Frédéric Antoun; conducted by Louis Langrée; English subtitles)

La Bohéme

Franco Zeffirelli studio film, 1965 (Mirella Freni, Gianni Raimondi; conducted by Herbert von Karajan; English subtitles)

Metropolitan Opera, 1977 (Renata Scotto, Luciano Pavarotti; conducted by James Levine; no subtitles)

Teatro alla Scala, 1979 (Ileana Cotrubas, Luciano Pavarotti; conducted by Carlos Kleiber; no subtitles)

Opera Australia, 1993 (Cheryl Barker, David Hobson; conducted by Julian Smith; Brazilian Portuguese subtitles)

Teatro Regio di Torino, 1996 (Mirella Freni, Luciano Pavarotti; conducted by Daniel Oren; Italian subtitles)

Teatro alla Scala, 2003 (Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, Marcelo Alvarez; conducted by Bruno Bartoletti; Spanish subtitles)

Zürich Opera House, 2005 (Cristina Gallardo-Domâs, Marcello Giordani; conducted by Franz Welser-Möst; no subtitles)

Robert Dornhelm film, 2009 (Anna Netrebko, Rolando Villazón; conducted by Bertrand de Billy; no subtitles)

Opera Australia, 2011 (Takesha Meshé Kizart, Ji-Min Park; Shao-Chia Lü; no subtitles)

Sigulda Opera Festival, 2022 (Maija Kovalevska, Mihail Mihaylov; conducted by Vladimir Kiradjiev; English subtitles)

[portraitsofsaints]

Saint Edith Stein

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

1891 - 1942

Feast Day: August 9

Patronage: Europeans, students, professors, philosophers, against death of parents, for conversion to the fullness of the faith, for courage in living out the faith.

Edith Stein was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and nun. Born into a devout German Jewish family, Edith Stein was baptized a Roman Catholic on January 1, 1922. In 1934 she entered the Carmelite Convent, where she took the name of Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.  In 1942 she was caught by the Gestapo, arrested wearing her habit and killed within weeks in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

[mote-historie]

Eduardo Benito, Vogue Cover, Late December 1925.

The 1920s lesbian power couple who transformed Vogue

For a few short years, Dorothy Todd and Madge Garland turned the magazine into a Modernist bible

Nearly a century ago, a lesbian couple took the helm of British Vogue, transforming the fledgling magazine into a tour-de-force of fashion, art, literature, and journalism. Dorothy Todd and Madge Garland masterminded it all, bringing the most luminous figures of the day into the fold; from Virginia Woolf, Edith Sitwell, and Gertrude Stein to Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, and Le Corbusier, the stellar line up of contributors was unparalleled. In conjunction with LGBT History Month in the UK (as well as the new exhibition Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition Inspired by Her Writings at Tate St Ives) we look back into this little-known chapter of queer fashion history... (x)

[catholic-saint-tournament]

About St Jacinta Marto (left)

About St Edith Stein (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, right)

Modern Bracket Round 1