Revisiting BISFT Summer School 1996, Marino Institute Dublin, ‘Being Women: Ways of Knowing’

In her paper ‘Mercy Not Sacrifice: Toward a Celtic Theology’ delivered in Dublin in 1996, Mary Condren began by addressing the problem of ‘a way of knowing’, that is, the concept of knowing and the relationship between power and knowledge, asking, ‘When we yearn for a Celtic or female way of knowing what is the fundamental impulse behind it, what is the longing behind it? What is the myth behind it?’[1]Is it possible to look to the Celtic past for answers or does any epistemology emanating from a colonized people, (including a women’s way of knowing) need to be examined carefully in regard to the inherent power politics and the question as to who owns the past? Can the myth of a pristine past be used to empower