Feminist theologian Mary Daly dies

Feminist theologian Mary Daly dies January 3, 2010

Another theologian in Catholic circles passes away this week, this time the controversial feminist theologian Mary Daly who taught at Boston College for 33 years. I received the following message from Daly’s colleague Mary Hunt via a bulletin from Feminist Studies in Religion:

With a heavy heart, yet grateful beyond words for her life and work, I report that Mary Daly died this morning, January 3, 2010 in Massachusetts. She had been in poor health for the last two years.

Her contributions to feminist theology, philosophy, and theory were many, unique, and if I may say so, world-changing. She created intellectual space; she set the bar high. Even those who disagreed with her are in her debt for the challenges she offered.

When I return from vacation at week’s end I will post more. But I want WATER colleagues, of which she was a stalwart one, to know this now. She always advised women to throw our lives as far as they would go. I can say without fear of exaggeration that she lived that way herself.

May her spirit soar and her ideas endure.

Mary E. Hunt
Hoechenschwand, Germany

UPDATE: NCR has more on Daly’s death here.


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