Abstraction, Mysticism, and Revolution: From Catholicism: End or Beginning? to Beyond God the Father and Pure Lust

Publication Date

1-1-2026

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Catholicism End or Beginning

DOI

10.1017/9781009180641.011

First Page

236

Last Page

267

Abstract

The rediscovery of Catholicism: End or Beginning? reveals the distinctiveness of Mary Daly’s mature thought. In her abandoned essay, she relies on male thinkers who contributed to her own philosophic education: Thomas Aquinas, Teilhard de Chardin, Mircea Eliade, Jacques Maritain, and Paul Tillich. Daly supposed she could weave the abstractions of these men into a workable ontology, but she failed. Her immediate experience in the Women’s Liberation Movement led her to recognize a dynamism that could not be held by any reified image of the divine, let alone a brittle organization like the Catholic Church. This essay compares Catholicism: End or Beginning? to parallel passages in Daly’s later works, Beyond God the Father and Pure Lust, to demonstrate the transformative power of Daly’s “creative political ontology.”

Keywords

Jacques Maritain, Mircea Eliade, ontology, Paul Tillich, Raya Dunayevskaya, Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Aquinas, Women’s Liberation Movement

Department

Humanities

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