Meg Stapleton Smith Editor

In its obituary, the Guardian newspaper called Mary Daly (1928–2010) 'one of the key feminist writers of the twentieth century.' Challenging patriarchy in religion, society, and culture, Daly was a coruscating critic of the ways in which patriarchal institutions operate and discriminate. The Church and the Second Sex (1968), her best-known book, was an attempt to work within a Christian framework. Later works, such as Pure Lust (1984) and Outercourse (1992), emerged from a post-Christian mindset. Written after the author wrote The Church and the Second Sex, and before she wrote the influential Beyond God the Father (1973), Catholicism: End or Beginning? Essays a new and revitalized ecclesiology which moves beyond the limitations of a perceived dichotomy between 'Catholic substance' and the 'Protestant principle.' The resolution of this polarity, in recovering a new freedom of spirit and intellectual power, would for Daly enable the theologian positively to answer the question 'has Catholicism reached its end, or is there hope for a genuine new beginning?' Meg Stapleton Smith is Adjunct Professor of Theology and Ethics at Fordham University and a theological ethicist, educator, and ordained priest in the Episcopal Church. She uncovered Mary Daly's unpublished work in the archives of Smith College where Daly's writings and papers are deposited. Its discovery will be exciting to anyone interested in Mary Daly's work and her extensive and continuing influence. The editor has commissioned additional chapters by prominent writers working at the interface of feminism, women's studies, theology, and philosophy. These show how Daly's text remains a potent contribution by one of the twentieth century's most important thinkers.