Mary Daly went from reforming the Catholic Church to leaving theology entirely
Mary Daly began as a Catholic scholar asking her church for equality and ended as a self-described post-Christian feminist inventing her own vocabulary. Along the way she collected three doctorates, taught at a Jesuit college for over three decades, and lost her post in a fight over admitting men to her classes.
Daly was born an only child in Schenectady, New York, on 16 October 1928, to Irish Catholic parents, and went through Catholic schools. As a girl she had what she later called mystical experiences, sensing divinity in nature. She earned an English degree from the College of Saint Rose in 1950, a doctorate in religion from Saint Mary's College in 1953, and later two more doctorates, in sacred theology and in philosophy, from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.
Her first book, The Church and the Second Sex of 1968, argued that faith and equality between the sexes could coexist and pressed the church to change. Boston College, where she taught from 1967, responded with a fixed-term contract, but backing from the then all-male student body and the public won her tenure. Five years later, Beyond God the Father, written in the systematic style of Paul Tillich, tried to rescue talk of God for women's liberation; it is often regarded as a founding text of feminist theology. By 1975 she called herself post-Christian, and she eventually abandoned theology as hopelessly patriarchal, though she kept a cherished copy of the Summa Theologica.
Gyn/Ecology in 1978 attacked the equal rights approach, arguing that reforms leave patriarchy's larger structures in place and can be repealed. Audre Lorde answered with an open letter accusing it of ignoring the myths and history of women of colour, and Daly's apparent silence hurt her reputation; a private reply surfaced in 2003 among Lorde's files. Later books, including the Wickedary of 1987, reclaimed words such as Hag and Witch. She was also an ethical vegetarian who opposed vivisection and fur.
Her refusal to let men into advanced women's studies classes led to conflict under Title IX; she taught them privately instead. After two male students filed a complaint in 1998, the college removed her tenure rights in 1999, and a confidential settlement followed. She told her side in Amazon Grace in 2006 and died in Gardner, Massachusetts, on 3 January 2010.
Source: Mary Daly
