Not sure how I missed this, but radical Latina feminist theologian Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz passed early last month from cancer at the age of 69. Ada Maria developed a cogent critique of the Catholic Church in the mid-80s, identifying the concept of “structural sin” for those enjoying the privileges of inequality, and developing a “mujerista” theology as an alternative frame of reference.
Ada MarÃa Isasi-DÃaz would have become a Roman Catholic priest, she told friends, if not for the church’s ban on ordaining women. Instead, she became a dissident theologian who spoke for those she considered the neglected spiritual core of the church’s membership: Hispanic women like herself.
Dr. Isasi-DÃaz, who died of cancer in New York on May 13, was widely known in North and South America as the chief theorist behind Mujerista theology — she published a book of the same name in 1996 — which extols the role of Hispanic women, especially the poor, in personifying Christian faith in the everyday struggles of life. She was 69.