Publication in 1968 of The Church and the Second Sex turned Mary Daly into a leading – arguably the first – Catholic feminist theologian. She then, in 1972, preached an incendiary sermon at Harvard Memorial Church, 'left behind centuries of darkness,' as she put it, and walked out of patriarchal religion. Daly next established herself, with Beyond God the Father (1973), as a post-Christian feminist philosopher. In between these trailblazing writings, she began to draft another book entitled Catholicism: End or Beginning? In the moment that she abandoned the text, she also seemingly renounced the institutional Roman Catholic Church. This volume comprises that lost, unfinished manuscript – remarkably rediscovered – augmented by complementary chapters from six preeminent feminist writers. Though partial, it completes the corpus of an iconic figure in radical liberationist and Catholic thought, delving deep into the mind of a woman who dared to leap into uncharted territories of faith and philosophical imagination.

• The vital missing piece in the complex Daly jigsaw. Written after the author wrote The Church and the Second Sex, and before she wrote the influential Beyond God the Father, it attempts a new and revitalized ecclesiology
• Initial publication in English of a work that has never appeared before in print: a powerful, hitherto lost, manuscript by 'the world's first feminist philosopher' (Guardian)
• The rediscovered work is augmented by deep reflections from six feminist writers – some of the foremost scholars in their fields. They not only demonstrate the work's relevance to Daly's other writings but also make connections with wider feminist theory and philosophy, theology, and Catholic history