Some students and faculty members mourned the passing of Mary Daly by remembering her as an outspoken Catholic feminist who challenged the Church to morph its teachings to changing social conditions. We join the BC community in mourning her death, and we wish to remember her legacy in terms of reality and not wishful thinking. Mary Daly was important to the feminist movement in that she was on the vanguard movement of females pursuing careers in academia.
In this regard, it is clear that Daly was not an exemplary feminist figure. First, her lax attitude towards professionalism caused her to miss an unacceptable number of department meetings. A professorship is an honor and a job, not an entitlement. Secondly, Daly was a blatant sexist, refusing to allow men in her classes. Finally, we find it ironic that Daly is being lauded as an innovative Catholic when she herself denied being one. Daly rejected any notion of Biblical scholarship and hoped to be seen as being postreligious.
Daly’s death coincides with the rise of a woman to the Chair of the Theology Department. This publication understands that it has had a somewhat difficult relationship with the theology department over the past two years. We see the change in chairmanship as a new opportunity to sustain a productive relationship. We hope that Professor Cornille supplants the Daly legacy by providing BC women with an example of strong academic professionalism which is both innovative and respectful of Tradition. While a theology department at a Catholic university need not encourage scholarship solely on Catholicism, we would hope that no academic department at Boston College holds biases against Catholicism. In this manner, Boston College can be both respectful of its past and still work to be a world-class academic institution.
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