Paragraph Farmer Patrick O’Hannigan examines blogger Eric Muller’s "analysis" of the Pope at Auschwitz

Muller, however, sees insult where none was intended, lamenting the alleged “degradation” of identifying Judaism as the taproot of Christianity, as though the effort to eliminate Judaism from the world were not “a complete crime in itself.” That the pope also had the temerity to mention Edith Stein, aka Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, gave Muller fits. Benedict’s notice of the apparent serenity with which Stein went to the gas chamber is interpreted by Muller as disrespectful of the many Jews who died along with her without first converting to Christianity.

It was John Paul II who asserted that Sister Benedicta belonged in the canon of Christian saints, but Muller gives that beloved son of Poland a victims’ pass, drawing his rhetorical sword only because John Paul’s German successor had the “effrontery” to remember Stein where she was killed, and then echo centuries of Christian teaching on the meaning of a sacrificial death. This, for Miller, is beyond the pale. One can’t help but wonder what he makes of the equally problematic spiritual journey undertaken by a first-century Pharisee named Paul of Tarsus.