The Many Minds of Mary Daly

The newly discovered manuscript, Catholicism: End or Beginning? , adds another dimension to the study of Mary Daly. It is probably a bridge from the Early Daly to the Later Daly, connecting her cradle Catholicism and early adult Catholicism with her mature adult feminist rejection of things Catholic. This essay focuses on three central questions: (1) What were the straws that broke the Catholic camel’s back for Mary? (2) How did the strenuous rejection of the patriarchal Roman Catholic Church still reflect Mary’s rootedness in Catholicism? (3) Is this manuscript a game-changer with regard to how scholars might interpret Mary Daly in the twenty-first century? With no guarantees of definitive answers to any or all of these questions, Mary Hunt offers a perspective on Daly’s many and agile minds.