Saints – Vicky Diloné

Like many, I had a pretty typical Catholic upbringing. I was baptized as a baby surrounded by family. I went to CCD and youth group, received the sacraments of initiation, and read the lives of the saints. So growing up I thought I knew who God was and what He was asking of me.

“All Christians are called to perfection,” says the Church.

“We are called to be saints,” many popes have affirmed.

“Be as perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect,” Jesus said during His sermon on the mount.

However, in my immaturity, I developed a skewed perception of what it means to be a good Catholic. I must never commit a sin, never be tempted to sin, and never struggle to not sin. I seriously thought this was how I was supposed to live: hyperconscious of my every action, word, and thought.

And I didn’t have anyone tell me otherwise–youth group meetings never reached this level in small group discussions, my family didn’t have close relationships with any priests or religious, and I don’t think my parents could see that I had this perception. I was barely aware of this perfectionism that I was letting shape my personality and actions.

This essay was originally published on the UI Women’s Center blog. My comment on chromosomes was not allowed in the original publication.

Writing for this blog has opened me up to new thoughts and ideas. I am challenged to think critically about the issues surrounding women and humanity as a whole. I am a believer that in order to find solutions to problems, definitions are needed. What is woman? I told myself, “I know what it is to be a woman, at least I know that I am one.” Besides confirming my gender by my XX chromosomes, I wanted to know what it means to be a woman from a philosophical point of view.

I recently went to a lecture about the nature of woman and was introduced to the works of Dr. Edith Stein. She was an early 20^th century philosopher whose research focused on women, empathy, and “feminine” traits. As I researched her life and read her lectures, I found the explanation to what I hadn’t been able to put into words before.

The Jew, the Atheist, and the Believer

Stein as a young women

Stein was born in in 1891 in Breslua, Germany, which is now in modern-day Poland. She was the youngest of eleven children and her parents were devout Jews. She was very close to her mother and was considered her favourite. Life circumstances, including the death of her father, led her to become an atheist by her teens. “I consciously decided, of my own volition, to give up praying.”

Stein was academically brilliant, studying German and history at University of Breslua, and later philosophy at Gottingen University. She was particularly interested in women’s issues and was a self-described radical suffragette. The subject of women in a professional setting and religious living became her focus later on in life. In 1915, she served as a nurse in WWI, where she was deeply disturbed by the sickness and death she witnessed. After a year, Stein returned to school and earned her doctorate summa cum laude with her thesis “The Problem of Empathy.” Read more

Vicky Diloné

Tag: Saints

The Heart of Perfection

Dr. Edith Stein: Philosopher and Holocaust Martyr