Book 16: Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation by Mary Daly

This was among the last Catholic feminist theology books that I read and purchased, maybe 5ish years ago. The vast majority of other Catholic feminist books, articles, podcasts, etc. reference her but usually with very little detail. Her first book, The Church And The Second Sex (1968), was the first book of this genre altogether; I understand that scholarly books dissecting other scholarly books in the burgeoning feminist movement were necessary to gain academic clout, but I can't stand them. That was the nature of her first book, which I found incredibly boring. Beyond God The Father is more her own ideas with plenty of scholarly resources.

As it was the first time I read it, this was a very difficult book to read. It's dry and dense. Daly complains about Freud 🤮 and celebrates Margaret Murray's inaccurate theories. She's also very white and doesn't realize it. And yet, this was the first. Much better books came along because of this. The first person to start something would make mistakes and struggle to shape the new movement into the form it would eventually take. Beyond God The Father came out 2 years after the first conference of women theologians, at my alma mater Alverno College in Milwaukee. I wrote at the end of my last post that my library was about to take a major turn, this directs that turn.

All of those Catholic feminist theologians thanked Daly for opening the door and then voiced their disappointment in where she went after this. If you hang out in Catholic feminist circles, you'll hear about Johnson, Schussler-Fiorenza, Radford Ruether, etc - but probably not Daly. She went from trying to lead the way for women in the post-Vatican II Church to starting the blend of Catholicism with Goddess worship to becoming a TERF. I share the same sadness and disappointment that those theologians have voiced, she went off the deep end. Even with all of its mistakes, Beyond God The Father was the seed for something wonderful that she chose not to stick around to see grow. 

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/328594.Beyond_God_the_Father 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 32: New Catholic Women: A Contemporary Challenge to Traditional Religious Authority by Mary Jo Weaver

I first discovered this book about a year ago when I explored the Loras College library. As a rule, I won't purchase a copy of a book that I haven't read, but this was a rare exception. After skimming it for around a half hour, I knew that I needed my own copy! This was my first time reading it. What's so significant about this book is Weaver wrote about the development of Catholic feminism while it was happening; I haven't encountered any other books that did this. She compared Catholic feminist theologians to each other during their careers, as well as the ongoing impacts of the Goddess movement. I have a few books that treat this period in the mid-80's as history, but Weaver was an analyst of this movement in real time.  My two main experiences while reading this book: 1) I know what happens after its publication, I know where the careers of these theologians went and I know that most of them are now dead. Weaver writes with a few vague predictions of the future,...
Read more

Book 1: Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Image
Up until middle school, everyone in my class hated studying history. Our textbooks were hand-me-downs from a local high school and all we were taught were names & dates of battles. And then we got a new middle school history teacher who taught us about how people lived throughout history, and we all loved it. In 7th grade we learned about the Civil War, and Mrs. Brenneman explained the significance of the book Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. I asked if we were going to read it as a class, and she said no, it was too difficult for middle schoolers.  I was determined to read it anyway since it was so historically important, and I found a decrepit copy in my mother's basement - I have no idea why she had it. She told me not to read it because people would think we were poor if they saw me reading a book barely held together by old tape, so I snuck it to school. When my reading teacher saw me physically struggling with the book, she bought me the copy t...
Read more

Book 31: Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence by Rosemary Curb & Nancy Manahan

I first became aware of this book in college; I was reading any feminist tomes I could get my hands on and several mentioned Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence . No copies were available anywhere, so when an episode of The L Word depicted a copy (with a historically inaccurate cover) I had to laugh at the idea that I had to go to Vancouver to get one! Despite attending a Catholic college, I was so anti-Christian at the time that I probably wouldn't have given this book the open mind it deserves. The first time I managed to get a copy from a library was around 2016 or 2017, and I bought my secondhand copy shortly afterwards. This is probably my third time reading the book. This is important history on the women's liberation movement, the Roman Catholic Church, Wicca/Paganism, and queer organizations/communities. What struck me reading this time was that the vast majority of the women in this book would be around the average age of a woman religious now: 88-ish. The few I Googled to ...
Read more