CONNECT: Mary Condren, whose 1989 book 'changed lives', believes feminism has been hijacked by the equality agenda, to the neglect of more important issues - such as saving the Earth - she tells Kathryn Holmquist
I'm not a feminist, but ... " is a phrase you often hear in an age when feminism is a dirty word. Most younger women seem to have no idea of what lives were like for women limited by inequality. "Venus", once a powerful Goddess, is a leg shaver and a current Guinness ad shows men rejecting the survival priorities of women (and thus the family) in the midst of a volcano eruption, in favour of rescuing a keg of Guinness which ejaculates on cue.
A Vodafone ad has two women with no money defining the new essence of female power, with the message, if only those guys with money in their pockets knew that after one drink I'm anybody's.
In a world where women are either the enemy or prostitutes, feminism is no more than a way of getting what you want at the expense of men. Add the label "theologian" to the label "feminist" and you enter a zone where only the intellectually intrepid walk.
Mary Condren, a feminist theologian, is unafraid. She is one of those true, passionate ethicists and intellectuals who have no choice but to pursue their calling.
From the age of five she wanted to be a nun and by age 20 was in a contemplative order of Carmelites, and now sees her role in society as "prophetic". She makes her living in the world of commerce, but makes her life in a realm where she would rarely be paid for her contributions.
Her re-evaluation of the role of women in Celtic mythology has been quietly but fundamentally influential on artists, such as Dorothy Cross, and writers, such as Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and Anne Bernard.
As a celebrant at wedding blessings and other transition rites (such as the cathartic, letting-go ceremonies of abuse victims), she has not only fulfilled her dream of becoming a priest, but has also brought the new concept of "woman church" to the Irish and international community in which she exists. As aunt to 36 nieces and nephews, most of whom live near her in eight houses within a 300-yard radius in Kilnamanagh in Tallaght, Co Dublin, she has never missed not having children of her own.
In 1989, Condren's book, The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion and Power in Celtic Ireland was published in the US by Harper & Row.
Richard Kearney, an Irish philosopher and novelist with a professorship at UCD who currently teaches at Boston College, described Condren's epistle as "a pioneering and passionate book that cries out to be read and re-read". Mary Daly, a feminist writer, described it as "a monumental contribution to the feminist work of re-visioning history".
The book shows how the power of the feminine in Celtic mythology was systematically destroyed by a male intellectual system, informed by Western Christianity. It predicts the horrendous consequences of the Catholic Church's oppression of sexuality, which we have been living with for the past decade as scandals in the Catholic Church have unfolded. It predicts the struggle between the US and the Taliban since September 11th. But Condren is not a woman to say "I told you so".
She doesn't have to. In the 13 years since, the book has circulated the world, has been shared with friends who borrowed and never returned it, while all 12 copies have "disappeared" from Dublin's public libraries. People walk up to Condren and say "your book changed my life".
This month, New Island, perhaps following the trend in popularity for "Celtic Spirituality" (as the ISBN categorises it) has published The Serpent and the Goddess in Ireland for the first time. Why do we need this book? And why do we need it now?
People have short memories. At Harvard in 1989, when Condren earned her doctorate in theology and became friends with the generation of feminist theologians who would begin to shake up the way we view "church", a lot of young women would say, "I'm not a feminist, but ...".
Condren would counter: do you realise that ten years ago, you could not have been sitting in this library because it was off-limits to women? Ten years ago you would have been restricted to Radcliffe.
But for Condren - who teaches in the Institute for Gender and Women's Studies at Trinity College, Dublin - feminism, theology and, beneath it all, ethics are about far more than whether women can attend Harvard or Radcliffe, sit on state boards or not, become TDs or not. She is driven by a sense of responsibility, of anguished identification with the weak and the vulnerable.
"I have a sense of calling, which I used to know the meaning of ... All I know now is that I'm doing only what I know how to do." Condren's deeper theme, which she analyses in her book, is the suffocation of feminine, nurturing instincts to protect the planet for future generations in favour of masculine, commercial, multinational exploitation of the planet - and human beings - for short-term gain.
"One thing that really disturbs me is the amount of media time dedicated to the FAI, compared to the soundbite given to the announcement that €32 million is being cut from the Irish aid budget to developing countries. When the World Wildlife Fund predicted that, by 2030, quality of human life will go into decline as a result of depletion of the Earth's resources, this news also warranted no more than a soundbite.
"Depletion of resources means the salmon, the dolphins, the seas and human beings. We cannot continue as we are at present. It's as though we are living in some kind of cocoon protecting us from the reality that we are massively destroying the Earth. Between two-thirds and four-fifths of the world is living at the verge of starvation and we in Ireland have become a wealthy country, and yet we still see ourselves as post-colonial victims and it has not changed our attitude to the life of people overseas and the Earth."
Feminism. Theology. In most minds, saving the Earth and feeding humanity doesn't run on the track defined by these two words. This is because "the feminist agenda has been hijacked by the equality agenda", Condren believes.
The narrow view of "feminism" - which Condren broadens in her book to an entire world view: of the nurturing of life versus the competitive pursuit of death; nurturing versus nuclear missiles - has sought to make women "equal" to men. This has reduced feminism to a matter of "add women and stir", or to giving women the right to act like men and thus perpetuate ethics created by men, says Condren.
The "equality agenda" means that the EU spends millions counting the numbers of women and men in various areas of enterprise, while there is very little spent on actually asking what kind of world we want to live in, what are our values, what are the ethics of the Government and the EU, and what impact do those ethics have?
"One of the things feminism needs to do is to bridge the gap between the public and the private worlds, between the public world of the ruthless, competitive and strong - who make the political decisions which result in taking from the weak - and the private world of family," she asserts.
No man or woman would believe in behaving within their family in the way that the public world behaves, taking food from the weak and from children. If we were to make the ethical choices in the public world that we make daily in the private world, there wouldn't be €32 million cut from the State's foreign aid budget with nary a whimper from the media, she argues.
She suggests that people who feel as she does should set up an escrow account or a trust, in which to place their taxes due to the revenue commissioners. You'd end up in court, I suggest to her.
"I wouldn't mind ending up in court," she retorts. "In the late 19th and 20th centuries, all the self-respecting feminists were in jail. I haven't seen a feminist in jail for a long time. We are on government commissions and nothing has improved for the weak and the vulnerable."
So are women politicians and others who gain positions of power selling out? "I think we are delighted to be included. We got into positions so we could change the world and not so that we would be absorbed by it. Women have been neutered by the equality agenda."
"Feminists" have been colonised, the way the Irish race once was - the only exception being former president Mary Robinson, Condren believes. "The women we do have in power are idealised, colonial types."
The Serpent and the Goddess: Women, Religion and Power in Celtic Ireland by Mary Condren (New Island, €13.99)