Catholicism: End or Beginning?

Publication in 1968 of The Church and the Second Sex turned Mary Daly into a leading – arguably the first – Catholic feminist theologian. She then, in 1972, preached an incendiary sermon at Harvard Memorial Church, ‘left behind centuries of darkness,’ as she put it, and walked out of patriarchal religion. Daly next established herself, with Beyond God the Father (1973), as a post-Christian feminist philosopher. In between these trailblazing writings, she began to draft another book entitled Catholicism: End or Beginning? In the moment that she abandoned the text, she also seemingly renounced the institutional Roman Catholic Church. This volume comprises that lost, unfinished manuscript – remarkably rediscovered – augmented by complementary chapters from six preeminent feminist writers. Though partial, it completes the corpus of an iconic figure in radical liberationist and Catholic thought, delving deep into the mind of a woman who dared to leap into uncharted territories of faith and philosophical imagination.

Author Biography

In its obituary, the Guardian newspaper called Mary Daly (1928-2010) ‘one of the key feminist writers of the twentieth century.’ Challenging patriarchy in religion, society, and culture, Daly was a coruscating critic of the ways in which patriarchal institutions operate and discriminate. The Church and the Second Sex (1968), her best-known book, was an attempt to work within a Christian framework. Later works, such as Pure Lust (1984) and Outercourse (1992), emerged from a post-Christian mindset. Written after The Church and the Second Sex and before the influential Beyond God the Father (1973), Catholicism: End or Beginning? explores a renewed and revitalized ecclesiology that transcends the perceived dichotomy between ‘Catholic substance’ and the ‘Protestant principle.’ For Daly, resolving this polarity – by reclaiming a new freedom of spirit and intellectual power – would allow theologians to answer the central question: ‘Has Catholicism reached its end, or is there hope for a genuine new beginning?’ Meg Stapleton Smith is Adjunct Professor of Theology and Ethics at Fordham University and a theological ethicist, educator, and ordained priest in the Episcopal Church. She uncovered Mary Daly’s unpublished work in the archives of Smith College where Daly’s writings and papers are deposited. Its discovery will be exciting to anyone interested in Mary Daly’s work and her extensive and continuing influence. The editor has commissioned additional chapters by prominent writers working at the interface of feminism, women’s studies, theology, and philosophy. These show how Daly’s text remains a potent contribution by one of the twentieth century’s most important thinkers.