Mary Daly, radical elemental feminist, God-hater, man-basher, self-described...

... "witch and madwoman," lesbian separatist, and slanderer of the Blessed Mother, died a few days ago, on January 3rd, after a long illness. If you aren't familiar with Daly and her significant influence in dissident Catholic and radical feminist circles, here is some info from a few obituaries:

• "Mary Daly, radical feminist theologian and a mother of modern feminist theology, died Jan. 3 at the age of 81. She was one of the most influential voices of the radical feminist movement through the later 20th century. Daly taught courses in theology, feminist ethics and patriarchy at Boston College for 33 years." (National Catholic Reporter)

• "She challenged the patriarchy of the Roman Catholic church in her writings. She said she barred men from her class [at Boston College] because women did not freely exchange ideas with them present, though she did privately tutor men." (New York Times)

• "Mary Daly, the feminist theologian and philosopher, has died . She was an audaciously creative spirit; an awkwardly witty, deadly serious writer. She arguably did more to stretch what is possible to think in contemporary feminist theology than any other." (Mark Vernon, blogging for The Guardian)

• "Fiercely and playfully -- often at the same time -- Mary Daly used words to challenge the basic precepts of the Catholic Church and Boston College, where she was on the faculty for more than 30 years. ... 'She was a great trained philosopher, theologian, and poet, and she used all of those tools to demolish patriarchy -- or any idea that domination is natural -- in its most defended place, which is religion,' said Gloria Steinem." (Boston Globe)

Daly has been described in obits as an "uppity theologian," a "pioneering feminist," and even a "Catholic feminist." The latter surely would have angered Daly, who apparently was angered easily and who obviously hated the Catholic Church with the same irrational fury she had for most (if not all) men, "patriarchy," and, well, just about anyone or anything that didn't align with her views. Of course, none of this would matter too much if Daly hadn't been so influential. She was, I think it is safe to say, the central figure in the development of radical feminist "theology" in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and while her profile dropped significantly in the 1980s and 1990s, many of her basic ideas continued to shape and inform a new generation of feminists, even while many of them discarded or disregarded some of her more extreme stances and outlandish statements.

I have no interest in speaking ill of the dead; the problem, however, is that Daly's writings are often so vile, hateful, angry, and incoherent, there's little good to say. And I wouldn't say anything at all except, again, her influence should not be ignored or forgotten. If nothing else, a little study of Daly shows us that the enemies of the Church often come from within, are often allowed to spread their diseased thinking from within institutions (Boston College) that should stand for truth and orthodoxy, and are not content to merely question this or that doctrine but desire a complete renunciation of the Tradition and a remaking of Christianity that has nothing to do with the Triune God, Jesus Christ, and authentic deposit of faith.

Frankly, having spent some time last night and this morning re-reading parts of two of her books, Beyond God the Father (1973) and Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978), I was getting sick to my stomach. I imagine that would make Daly smile if she were still alive; by all account she thrived as upsetting and angering men and orthodox Christians. But, in case you're not familiar with her writings and think I am being sensational or overly sensitive, here are a few quotes from Daly's books and interviews:

• The beginning of liberation comes when women refuse to be "good" and/or "healthy" by prevailing standards. To be female is to be deviant by definition in the prevailing culture. To be female and defiant is to be intolerably deviant. This means going beyond the imposed definitions of "bad woman" and "good woman," beyond the categories of prostitute and wife. This is equivalent to assuming the role of witch and madwoman. (Beyond God the Father, 65-66)

• The catholic Mary is not the Goddess creating parthenogenetically on her own, but rather she is portrayed /betrayed as Total Rape Victim—a pale derivative symbol disguising the conquered Goddess. ... The rape of the rarefied remains of the Goddess in the christian myth is mind/spirit rape. In the charming story of "the Annunciation" the angel Gabriel appears to the terrified young girl, announcing that she has been chosen to become the mother of god. Her response to this sudden proposal from the godfather is totaled nonresistance: "Let it be done unto me according to thy word." Physical rape is not necessary when the mind/will/spirit has already been invaded. In refined religious rapism, the victim is impregnated with the Supreme Seminal Idea, who becomes "the Word made flesh." Within the rapist christian myth of the Virgin Birth the role of Mary is "utterly minimal; yet she is "there." She gives her unqualified "consent." (Gyn/Ecology, 84, 84)

• [Writing about abortion:] Males do indeed deeply identify with "unwanted fetal tissue," for they sense as their own condition the role of controller, possessor, inhabitor of women. Draining female energy, they feel "fetal." Since this perpetual fetal state is fatal to the Self of the eternal mother (Hostess), males fear women's recognition of this real condition, which would render them infinitely "unwanted." For this attraction/need of males for female energy, seen for what is is, is necrophilia—not in the sense of love for actual corpses, but love for those victimized into a state of living death. (Gyn/Ecology, 59).

•  If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males. (Interview with EnlightenNext magazine, Fall-Winter 1999)

• I suggest that the mechanism of reversal has been at the root of the idea that the "Antichrist" must be something "evil". What if this is not the case at all? What if the idea has arisen out of the male's unconscious dread that women will rise up and assert the power robbed from us? What if it in fact points to a mode of being and presence that is beyond patriarchy's definition of good and evil? The Antichrist dreaded by the Patriarchs may be the surge of consciousness, the spiritual awakening, that can bring us beyond Christolatry into a fuller stage of conscious participation in the living God. Seen from this perspective the Antichrist and the Second Coming of Women are synonymous. This Second Coming is not a return of Christ but a new arrival of female presence, once strong and powerful, but enchained since the dawn of patriarchy. Only this arrival can liberate the memory of Jesus from enchainment to the role of "mankind's most illustrious scapegoat." The arrival of women means the removal of the primordial victim, "the Other," because of whom "the Son of God had to die." When no longer condemned to the role of "savior," perhaps Jesus can be recognizable as a free man. It is only female pride and self-affirmation that can release the memory of Jesus from its destructive uses and can free freedom to be contagious. The Second Coming, then, means that the prophetic dimension in the symbol of the great Goddess—later reduced to the "Mother of God"—is the key to salvation from servitude to structures that obstruct human becoming. (Beyond God the Father, 96)

• I'm trying to name something that can only be recognized by women who are seizing back our power. But the words have been stolen from us—even though perhaps they were originally our words—they're our words, but they've been reversed and twisted and shrunken. I see myself as a pirate, plundering and smuggling back to women that which has been stolen from us. But it hasn't simply been stolen; it's been stolen and reversed. For example, the christian trinity is the triple goddess reversed. The trinity is aptly described as a closed triangle. It doesn't go anywhere. It's clonehood. (Interview with EnlightenNext magazine, Fall-Winter 1999)

• The "gentle Jesus" who offers the faithful his body to eat and his blood to drink is playing Mother Goddess. And of course this fetal-identified male behind this Mother Mask is really saying: "Let me eat and drink you alive." This is no mere crude cannibalism but veiled vampirism. (Gyn/Ecology, 81)

• As I wrote in Gyn/Ecology: all patriarchal religions are patriarchal—right? They take different forms. What would I think? There's nothing to think about. It has taken another form—seductive, probably, because christianity is so overtly warlike and abusive. And furthermore, I don't know what "enlightened" means. It's not a word that's in my vocabulary. This is like a christian woman being upset over something that Paul said, instead of seeing that of course he's an asshole. He's one more very macho asshole described as a saint and as enlightened, and once you get over that, you get over it. You see it for what it is and you don't worry about why he would say such a thing. Of course he would say such a thing. That's what he is. It's really extremely simple. Stop wrestling with it; it's not interesting. Get out of it. That would be my approach to it. Misogynists! Hateful! All of them! I studied them. And finally I just didn't try to reason with it anymore. Boston College was most enlightening to me. The experience of being fired for writing The Church and the Second Sex introduced me to the idea that it's not going to change. That's the way it is—leave it. (Interview with EnlightenNext magazine, Fall-Winter 1999)

• I have already suggested that if God is male, then the male is God. The divine patriarch castrates women as long as he is allowed to live on in the human imagination. The process of cutting away the Supreme Phallus can hardly be a merely "rational" affair. The problem is one of transforming the collective imagination so that this distortion of the human aspiration to transcendence loses its credibility. (Beyond God the Father, 19)

There is much, much more, but that should suffice as a small taste of Daly's madness. And it is madness. I would even suggest that it is demonic in content. This madness is described and analyzed in some Ignatius Press books over the years, most notably What Will Happen to God? Feminism and the Reconstruction of Christian Belief (1988), by William Oddie; Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism (1991), by Donna Steichen; The Politics of Prayer: Feminist Language and the Worship of God (1992), edited by Helen Hull Hitchcock; and God or Goddess? Feminist Theology: What Is It? Where Does it Lead? (1995), by Manfred Hauke.

The following further information about Daly and her thought is drawn from those works.

Daly was born in 1928, into an Irish Catholic family in New York. She attended Catholic schools and then earned doctorates in sacred theology and philosophy from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. She received her Bachelors in English from The College of Saint Rose, her Masters in English from The Catholic University of America, and also had a doctorate in religion from St. Mary's College. She was, Fr. Hauke states, the first American woman to receive a doctorate in Catholic theology. Her first book, The Church and the Second Sex (1968) drew upon the thought of Simone de Beauvoir, Rosemary Ruether, Betty Friedan, Bernard Häring, Teilhard de Chardin, Paul Tillich, Hans Küng, Gregory Baum, and Harvey Cox, among others. It declared the Church to be "misogynist" and attacked traditional notions of God, the Incarnation, sin, and salvation. She expressed an especially strong dislike for Gertrud von le Fort's book, The Eternal Woman (soon to be republished by Ignatius Press).

Not surprisingly, Daly advocated birth control and wrote of the "moral ambiguity and complexity" of abortion. The Jesuit-run Boston College sought to dismiss her after the book's publication, but students of the then all-male school protested and the administration relented. Ironically, she would eventually be forced into retiredment by the school thirty years later when she refused to allow male students into her classes (she later sued the school and won a monetary settlement). Her 1973 book, Beyond God the Father was an open renunciation of Christianity, with open denial and attacks upon every basic tenet of Catholicism. Later works revealed her rejection of theism; following the thought of A.N. Whitehead and influenced by Tillich, she adopted a form of pantheism/panintheism.

While initially enthusing about androgyny, she later called the term "vacuous" and emphasized that genders are completely artificial constructs of patriarchal societies (she preferred the term "gynocentric"). Daly promoted "eco-feminism" and openly advocated lesbianism and witchcraft. She wrote of the "Courage to Blaspheme" and the "Courage to Sin". In 1990 she gave an address at St. Rose's College (Albany, NY) titled, "Be-Witching: Recalling the Courage to Sin," during which she mocked the second coming of Christ and encouraged those present to sing, "O come, let us ignore him."  Her later works—Pure Lust  (1984), Websters' First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language (with Jane Caputi, 1987), Outercourse (1992), and Quintessence (1998)—were increasingly incoherent and fragmented in nature, and even her admirers admitted how difficult she was to understand and to like (one feminist blogger wrote, after Daly's death: "I didn't like her," while another lamented her "transphobia.")

Daly's best known phrase—a summation of her essential perspective—was, "Since God is male, the male is God" (first appearing in "The Qualitative Leap Beyond Patriarchal Religion"; Quest 1, 1974). Roland Mushat Frye, in a chapter titled, "On Praying 'Our Father': The Challenge of Radical Feminist Language for God," (The Politics of Prayer: Feminist Language and the Worship of God (1992), ed.Helen Hull Hitchcock; pp 209-228), wrote, "Like most slogans, this one minimized evidence while increasing conviction, and it has served as a powerful rallying cry for radical feminism. ... Through her writings, [Daly] probably contributed as much as anyone to establishing the radical feminist attitude toward traditional Christian language for God."

Frye notes, however, that the slogan "runs contrary to the evidence. Neither the bible nor the Christian and Jewish traditions have ever taught that God is male, and, in terms both explicit and implicit have repeatedly denied that he is. In this, both the Christian and Jewish traditions stand in stark opposition to pagan and gnostic religions which recognized a host of 'genital gods', or dii genitales, as Cicero's Roman contemporaries called them." He points out that "the most dramatic refutation" of any identification of God as a male is found in Deuteronomy 4:16-17: "Therefore take good heed to yourselves. Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a graven image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female..." God's fatherhood "does not consist in sexual generation," Fry observes, "but in his calling of them to be his chosen people, and his adoption of them by his grace."

May the gracious Father of all have mercy on Mary Daly. Requiescat in pace.

UPDATE: A bit more from a piece in the New York Times:

Daly wrote about her intellectual formation in a 1996 article in the New Yorker ''Sin Big,'' in which she recalled being mocked by a male classmate, and altar boy, at her parochial school because she could never ''serve Mass'' because she was a girl.

''(T)his repulsive revelation of the sexual caste system that I would later learn to call 'patriarchy' burned its way into my brain and kindled an unquenchable Rage,'' she wrote.

Daly described herself as a pagan, an eco-feminist and a radical feminist in a 1999 interview with The Guardian newspaper of London. ''I hate the Bible,'' she told the paper. ''I always did. I didn't study theology out of piety. I studied it because I wanted to know.''

Rage and hate. Sad.

Comments

[LJ]

At least she had the integrity to finally leave the Church publicly, seeing that she reviled the Church publicly for so many years.

It makes one wonder how one person could contain such hatred for such a sustained period. I don't think she was even a happy pagan.

Your quotes from her writings and your suggestion of the demonic seemed fitting. It brought to mind images from various movies of the demon possessed vomiting up huge quantities of bile.

We can only trust to divine mercy and perhaps some ray of light at or near the end of her life.

What was it Captain Willard said about Colonel Kurtz; "he broke from them and then he broke from himself. I'd never seen a man so broken up and ripped apart." That's the sense I get of her.

[Maria]

Okay, now I'm just sick! Yuckkkkk! She taught at Boston College for that long?? I'm getting sick again!

[Gail F]

"• The "gentle Jesus" who offers the faithful his body to eat and his blood to drink is playing Mother Goddess. And of course this fetal-identified male behind this Mother Mask is really saying: "Let me eat and drink you alive." This is no mere crude cannibalism but veiled vampirism. (Gyn/Ecology, 81)"

That's just insane. People have a tendency to think that a person who appears to be smart and/or artistic (I am thinking of several artists and writers here) and who then says bizarre things and/or creates bizarre artwork must be a genius. What they say is just so weird, it MUST be the work of a genius who sees and understands what regular people don't see or understand.

But it's not always true at all, and that is just NUTS.

[Blessed Karl]

PLease pray for her soul. Mary Daly was a tragedy. She turned from the faith and from God. She became an instrument of the devil. She does not deserve our anger...just our sadness, sympathy and prayers. I hope she repented...

[lome]

No one can escape the truth about dying.
Sooner or later ,one will face his maker.
How horrible and terrifying to face an angry God?
wasn't it better not to be born at all?

God have mercy on her soul.

[R.S.Newark]

Should we thank Boston College for lacking courage and employing her for so long. Are there continually men teachers at that university who are mentally malformed enough to pretend they are women and support her seditiously and deviously.

[MJL]

I personally will pray for her and hope that salvation is shined into her life. All the same, I was terribly disturbed by the presence of a rather praiseworthy obituary in many bulletins of Catholic Church's in Chicago. It's odd, all in all.

[Rick Kempf]

She may be one reason Peter Kreeft refers to BC as "barely catholic." I hope BC will now enjoy what we have been absorbing outside - the springtime of the new evangelization.

[Dominic]

May God have mercy on her.
Because if I were him,i wouldnt.
She deserves none,as an enemy of the Church.

Dominic.

[Jean]

How very sad. I thought the key to her life was here: "What would I think? There's nothing to think about." Her story is a story of revenge for hurt feelings, not a rational attempt to seek the truth or to right wrongs.

On the other hand, she fits with my impression of other feminists of a certain era. Reading their works decades after the publication, I was struck by the close-mindedness of those who believed be a feminist is to be a lesbian. And the equivalency between marriage and "a comfortable concentration camp" was obviously embraced by women who never envisioned a culture in which the new norm was no longer marriage but financially-strapped women living with a succession of boyfriends/babydaddies.

[Jack]

She was very likely perfectly possessed.

[Theresa]

My immediate reaction was to pray for her soul.

Back in the 1980's I was forced to read 'Beyond God the Father" as part of a course on liberation theology at another Jesuit university. As a female I too was totally sickened by the end of the book. I became convinced that had she had an earthly father as wonderful as my own dear dad she would have no trouble with the concept of God as a loving father. Ironically I see today that she was born the same year as my dad. Although he now is in nursing care with severe dementia he gave all that he could to those in need and especially to the pro-life cause. Interestingly he grew up in a household full of strong women and with a father who believed strongly in a college education for all his children, both male and female.

As difficult as I found that course to take, reading the works of Daly and Rosemary Radford Reuther and others, I can say it did make me much stronger in defending my faith. But it was the Grace of God and the strong foundation provided by my parents which gave me the strength to stand up to my professor and what we were being taught.

I'll continue to pray for Mary Daly's soul.

[Bob]

And to think, Religion teachers at the primary and secondary level have to be recertified every few years. What for? Why don't we all teach at the university level and preach whatever we want (the bishops can't/won't do anything about it)!

[Gabriel Austin]

One recognizes the Irish girl who resented not being a boy. One sees it in the female Irish revolutionaries who turned Communist when independence was won. They had gotten into the habit of revolting: the cause was indifferent.

I admit to laughing at the idea that she did not want men in her classrooms. Too distracting for the women, the poor weak dears.

I think it hilarious that Boston College - an institution in the Jesuit tradition of talking out of both sides of your mouth at once - could not handle a woman. The Jesuits have never had a female component; women remain a closed book to them.

[Manuel G. Daugherty Razetto]

Carl's mindful, sensitive assessment of Mary Daly and her wicked output makes us wonder how an unhealthy mind can manage to infect others as she did. That she taught at Boston College for 30 years is an astonishing proof of how progressive infiltration has succeeded in the very womb of our Church.
Feminism contrives to nullify standards established in our society regarding the most inborn rolls of man and woman. Such anti-christian, unnatural ways need to be energetically repudiated.

[TL]

Oh sure I can see why that wildly "outrageous" and "man-hating" quote from Gyn-Ecology is surely reason for a man-child to get all insecure over. I mean how crazy it is to suggest women not be "good wives". LOL
That is sooooooooo radical and overboards!
How did she survive 81 years w/o being burned at the stake? I mean my GOD! To DARE have the audacity to suggest women not be "good wives".

Here's a tip, just because you say something to preface something immoral you're about to do like ... saying "I don't mean to speak ill of the dead" ... then go on and speak ill of the dead...
is very transparent.
Backpedaling is something that is very easy to catch in a persons writing character. That's a tip that would serve you well in your blogger's career.
Oh and btw the male feminists I know adore Mary, they despise Patriarchy just as much as any radical feminist. Because patriarchy does nothing but destroy everything in it's path and matriarchy serves as creation. Who would you rather hang out with? I know who we would.
So bless you and I hope when you're on your deathbed you remember how you spoke of a woman who changed the face of the planet for women... clearly and issue that threatens you beyond hiding the obviousness of your inferiority complex.
Good luck.

[TL]

OMG as if this article wasn't hilarious enough, the commentary from all of the little threatened man-children lmaoooooooooo hysterical!

Someone please tell me why all of the freak priests molest and rape children?

I will not pray for their souls and hope they drop dead and burn in a pit of fiery hell. Pig molesting freaks. Why do men rape? Do you know over 500,000 women were raped by men last year? Only 37% of women report rape btw. And only 6% of men spend even 1 day in jail.

A woman is raped every 2 minutes in the United States.

Why do psycho-pigs rape?

Can someone explain that?

Why do man-pigs rape?

Too bad your mother's didn't abort you.

Mary did say men identify with unwanted fetal tissue, now didn't she???

HAIL MARY

[Alan Phipps]

"Too bad your mother's didn't abort you."

"Mary did say men identify with unwanted fetal tissue, now didn't she???"

And that's the doublespeak. On the one hand, you assert that an unborn child is "fetal tissue". And yet, on the other hand, you reveal quite willingly that you know an unborn child is much more than mere tissue by pointing out the essential connection between the born and the unborn: that all of these men wouldn't be around to give you grief if only their mothers had aborted them. What you really mean to say is, "You shouldn't be alive".

[Manuel G. Daugherty Razetto]

TL's 'argumentum ad ignorantiam' displays a syncretistic, messy parade of unhappy sentences that show too well how feminists are ill prepared to sustain objectivity and logic.
Caecus iter monstrare vult.

[Roseanne Sullivan]

I left the Church in the early 1960s. When I relapsed about ten years later, having missed Vatican II entirely, it just killed me to find out that crazy Catholicism-hating, God-hating, rabid feminist Mary Daly was then teaching her own religion to impressionable students at Boston College. I grew up in Boston, and I knew BC was Catholic. I wondered, What could have happened during that decade I was away? Daly taught that God is a woman and that males had co-opted the noble women-faith that was witchcraft, and her rest of her concocted doctrines turned true doctrine and morality upside down. The fact that foul minded hate-filled heretics like her were supported by Catholic parents who paid good money to send their children to a Catholic college boggled my mind. I was a bit comforted by the fact that Pope John Paul II was still teaching the faith that had been handed down from the apostles, but all around me Catholics were dismissing the pope as a provincial Polish throwback to the old hierarchical patriarchal religion. The pain and bewilderment I felt about seemingly being the last Catholic in America cannot be described. The relief I feel now that I have found traditional Catholics who share my faith also cannot be described. Thank you, Ignatius Press for helping keep the faith alive during this 40 years of wandering in the desert of distorted theology. I pray for Mary Daly's soul, and I pray that those who abetted her and those she has misled will be reacquainted with and learn to love the Truth. And I pray that the Church may continue to be purged from all those who teach such monstrous errors.