SOURCE: Donnelly, Doris. Review of Beyond God the Father, by Mary Daly. America 130 (19 January 1974): 39-41.

In the following review, Donnelly evaluates the strengths and weaknesses in Beyond God the Father.

Mary Daly usually does not tease. Coy she is not. Nor playful. Nor shy.

In fact, if ever there were a showdown at the O.K. Corral with those insecure, clerical, hierarchic types, nothing less than The Church and the Second Sex—her vastly knowledgeable and impeccably researched book detailing the history of ecclesial suppression of the feminine—would have qualified her as the one and only straight-from-the-hip champion of women-in-the-Church causes. And the odds on Professor Daly's mastery over her opposition would have been as secure as a Joe Frazier victory over Mortimer Snerd.

Something of a wonder, then, and a disappointment, that the bristling, forthright tone that so suited the expository style of her first book...