Catholicism: End or Beginning?

Has Catholicism reached its end or is there hope for a genuine new beginning? This remarkably retrieved – hitherto lost and unpublished – work by iconic radical thinker Mary Daly, complemented by reflections from six preeminent feminist writers, raises profound questions that seemingly led to Daly's final break with the Catholic Church.

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.