Since I share my name with a famous person, I figured I would tell you a little bit about her before I get started on the real mission for this blog.

Mary Daly is considered the pioneer of the contemporary feminist theology. She died in early January aged 81 after two years of illness. She is however remembered for her legacy as one of the most dominant voices in the deep-seated feminist movement late in the twentieth century. Mary Daly was in Boston College for more than thirty years where she taught patriarchy, theology as well as feminist courses. She was fired from the college for a short time after the publishing of “the church and the second sex” her first book in 1968. However, she was reinstated in the college after the general public and the students protested in support of her. Ironically, the college had only male students at the time. This was definitely bound to have a boosting effect on her work and it is reported that she has consistently been on the warpath against Boston College, the Vatican, not to mention those who preserve patriarchy.

Mary Daly was born in New York to working class Irish parents. This definitely had a bearing on her deep sense of their heritage both religious and ethnic. She is said to have had deep interest in philosophy as well as theology while she was young. It is no wonder then that she later excelled in these fields especially given the support she received from her parents to pursue her intellectual dream. One notable thing about her is that she earned her degree in theology and philosophy from the University of Freiburg at a time when education system of the Catholic discouraged women from doing so.

Mary Daly drew her inspiration from a wide range of thinkers including Virginia Wolf, Thomas Aquinas and Simon de Beauvoir a French feminist. It is from these thinkers, and especially Aquinas that she learnt to decipher man’s thinking who she concluded held the notion that women were misbegotten males. She is also known for her conclusion that patriarchy was the biggest obstacle to the advancement of women as it perpetuated oppression and other social ills that promoted the treatment of people as objects.

Her career in Boston College’s theology departments was terminated due to the relatively uneasy relationship that they had. The root of this acrimony was what was viewed as a discriminatory principle where she would only allow women to take her classes. Unfortunately, even the public agreed that she was on the wrong this time round. She would undertake to teach men privately for quite some time. Daly claimed that the men in attendance would blur the learning environment, terming her decision to teach women only as enshrined in the academic freedom.

One thing that is for sure though is that she was a leading light for feminist theologians in late 20th century often being at loggerheads with the theology that was male dominated. In this case therefore, their critical thought reshaped Christianity and theology as a whole. She had many other books that she had written over the course of her life.