JQ 034 - the Jewish Philosophical Doctor of the Church?

St. Teresa Benedicta a Cruce

“Unite with me in prayer.” The Marian element - Mater Ecclesiae - in the Meaning of Catholic - Mary is Lady Wisdom.

All these were persevering with one mind in prayer with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren (Acts i. 14).

1. Aristotle rejected Lady Wisdom (“woman is a misbegotten man” - I q92 a1) and hence ahistorical, Aristo-Thomism can be led into subtle intellectual idols

   1. “Catholic Patriarchy and the Traditional View of Women”

   2. Garrigou-Lagrange is true Thomism - deeply Marian and deep in the interior life.¹

2. Jewish Wisom is לב חָכָ֣ם וְנָב֔וֹן - leb ha-kam wenbown

   1. καρδίαν φρονίμην καὶ σοφήν

   2. cor sapiens et intelligens

3. Wisdom is a Woman

   1. “In Proverbs, Solomon attains wisdom that leads to temporal success

   2. “In Ecclesiastes, he despairs of temporal success because death renders it vain.

   3. “In the Song, he discovers that love is stronger than death (Cant. viii. 6).

   4. “In Wisdom, he falls in love with Lady Wisdom and so attains immortality.”²

      1. Lady wisdom (created wisdom) gives birth to Eternal Wisdom

      2. Union of the “one and many”

      3. Man and woman

      4. Logos and Sophia

         1. Christ is Logos (uncreated) and Sophia (“God’s Body”³)

4. The Seraphic Doctor vs. the Angelic (Common) Doctor

   1. Plato vs. Aristotle

   2. Bonaventure vs. Thomas

   3. Woman vs. Man

5. “Jewish” despair

   1. Young Edith becomes an Atheist - foreshadows the passion of Elie Wiesel “God died at Auschwitz”⁴

   2. Is the Holocaust the cross for Jews and Gentiles?

      1. The mystery of Vatican II and the restoration of Jewish-Catholic dialogos

6. Jewish Realism founded by Edmund Husserl

   1. But Fr. Franz Brentano had two students

7. Edith Stein was converted to the Messiah by Jewish Realism

   1. Augustinian Phenomenology lifted the “Jewish” veil from her heart

      1. The manifestation of the cross by her Protestant friend Anna Reinach

      2. Protestant (future Godmother) Hedwig Conrad-Martius gives St. Teresa Benedicta her namesake

         1. St. Teresa of Jesus, who grandfather was a “true Jew,” converted Edith Stein in one sitting

8. St. Teresa Benedicta, under obedience, continues her Augustinian practice of wisdom

   1. Jewish Husserl to St. Thomas: “We are both convinced that a logos is the force behind all that is.”⁵

   2. She provides the Metaphysical basis for the synthesis between Vatican I and Vatican II for the Modern World

      1. Vatican I is Aristotle and Vatican II is Augustine⁶

      2. The Nοῦς of head and heart⁷

         1. The life-giving union of Husband and Wife

         2. The Family is the “final battle” with Antichrist

   3. Universal call to holiness: climax of her magnum opus: St. Teresa of Jesus and true humanism

      1. “It is altogether foreign to [St. Teresa of Jesus] to wonder whether the structure of the soul has any meaning apart from God’s indwelling.” The metaphysics of God’s indwelling in the heart.⁸

9. The Science of the Cross - completed in the year before her martyrdom

   For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men (I Cor. i. 22-25).

10. “Hearts Unquiet” - St. Monica’s tears are her birth pains for Western civilisation

    1. The Novus Ordo Missae reunites them

    2. Collect for St. Monica

    3. (New) Collect for St. Augustine

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