Catholicism: End or Beginning?

by Mary Daly, Meg Stapleton Smith (Editor)

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 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.

368 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 15, 2026

About the author

Mary Daly was an American radical feminist philosopher, academic, and theologian. Daly, who described herself as a "radical lesbian feminist", taught at Boston College, a Jesuit-run institution, for 33 years. Daly consented to retire from Boston College in 1999, after violating university policy by refusing to allow male students in her advanced women's studies classes. She allowed male students in her introductory class and privately tutored those who wanted to take advanced classes.