Sin a Smidge for Mary Daly

Gasson Hall at Boston College tagged Bostonist by richietown Mary Daly, longtime Boston College professor and radical elemental feminist (post/Christian) theologian, passed away last weekend. Daly often criticized the “eight deadly sins of the fathers: processions, professions, possession, aggression, obsession, assimilation, elimination and fragmentation.” She was a vegetarian and animal rights activist as well. Her many books included classics like The Church and the Second Sex and Beyond God the Father , which questioned the male-centric nature of much religious belief. Several of her titles were published locally by Beacon Press . Daly’s time at BC was not smooth sailing: the school tried to fire her early on after the publication of the controversial Second Sex , and a lawsuit eventually forced her retirement in 1999 after she refused to admit

male students into some of her courses. The National Catholic Reporter has a nice obituary , which includes excerpts from a 1996 New Yorker article (subscription required) Daly wrote: The word ‘sin’ is derived from the Indo-European root ‘es-,’ meaning ‘to be.’ When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a woman trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin.’ I urge you to sin…. But not against these itty-bitty religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism—or their secular derivatives, Marxism, Maoism, Freudianism and Jungianism—which are all derivatives of the big religion of patriarchy. Sin against the infrastructure itself! Rest in peace, Mary.

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Sin a Smidge for Mary Daly