Dying Boomers Dying

When dissident theologian Mary Daly passed January 3rd, it caught my eye mostly because I was in grad school at the height of the great hue and cry over her banning of men from her classes at Boston College. Our professor for a study of the Christian Democracy movement was one Charles R. Dechert, now emeritus, who observed in passing one day that he'd once dated Mary Daly...and sincerely hoped her career wasn't something he'd said. He seemed to think the poor thing was just crazy, flat out.

Charlotte Allen reflects that there is no second generation of Mary Dalys and explores why that might be. I think it's a problem of human nature: there is one, loud assertions to the contrary, and therefore even aberrance has an outer limit. Once you've transgressed absolutely everything, there is simply nothing left to protest and the whole intellectual enterprise becomes exceedingly boring. You have to drop out and start making crafts.

And Allen nails the flaw in the whole Catholic progressive plan:

most Catholics of her generation have not passed on the tenets of their faith to their children—the offspring of the Vatican II generation tend either to be churchless or not to go to church—or, in the case of academics, to their students. It's hard to rebel when you don't even know what you are rebelling against.