Mary Daly

Gebundenes Buch

Catholicism: End or Beginning?

Beschreibung

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.

Autor

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?'

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Cambridge University Press
• Seitenzahl: 368
• Erscheinungstermin: 15. Januar 2026
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 216mm x 142mm x 28mm
• Gewicht: 580g
• ISBN-13: 9781009180634
• ISBN-10: 1009180630
• Artikelnr.: 73870327

Rezensionen

'Mary Daly's unfinished Catholicism: End or Beginning? represents a brilliant example of a brilliant woman thinking, and indeed writing, out loud, as her explorations - and especially her burgeoning sense of the fundamental misogyny running through the institutions of Protestantism and Catholicism - led her to make an inevitable and inexorable break with those traditions that had no respect for what Luce Irigaray would call a dialectic between the sexes. It is an extraordinarily valuable record of a pioneering woman's struggle toward intellectual, theological, and personal integrity.' Mary Teresa Condren, Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, Trinity College, University of Dublin