Mary Daly’s transformation-from aspiring Catholic theologian to pagan Crone, as she thinks of herself now-began at Pope John 23rd’s Second Vatican Council. Some saw a church modernizing itself; what she saw was an ancient and spectacular contrast between colorfully gowned peacock princes of the church, the hierarchs of patriarchy, and a few humble women helping out, mostly veiled nuns walking in file like unwelcome ants at an all-boy picnic.
The scene ignited Mary Daly’s first manifesto, titled The Church and the Second Sex, and launched a career in radical feminism, including some famous fights with her Jesuit bosses to keep males out of her college classes, and wider warfare in new words like “gyn-ecology” and “gynophilia” to fight “gynocide,” by the patriarchy, of course. Outraged and outrageous, she’s still saying: wake up women, your lives and the planet are at stake. Dauntless Mary Daly is this hour on The Connection.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
Mary Daly, former Boston College professor of theology and philosophy, author of “Gyn/Ecology,” and “The Wickedary.”