If there was ever the need to be reminded that nobility is a quality of the soul and character and not of social status or political power, Professor Mary (Sheehy) Shivanandan (1932-2025) was a clear and convincing demonstration.
Professor Hayden Ramsay, the new president of the Catholic Institute of Sydney, recalls meeting her near the Trevi Fountain in Rome and he was struck by the “elegance” of her demeanour and also of her mind.
Professor Tracey Rowland recalls: “What I will always remember about Mary Shivanandan is how gracious she was. I don’t know where she learned her manners, perhaps the convent at Rose Bay, but when she spoke she had the capacity to make you think that you were the most important person she had met for ages and being of some assistance to you was her privilege. She was one of the kindest people I have met.”
In every sense, Mary was the “gentlewoman” of contemporary Catholic thought and it was sad to receive the news that she died last week at the age of 93 in Maryland.
Mary also articulated and personified the powers of “feminine genius” which Pope St John Paul II extolled as being essential for a healthy, life-giving civilisation in the 21st century.
Mary’s vocation and her excellent studies were extensive and diverse.
Mary was born as the third child of Lady Jean and Sir John Sheehy in Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar) as her father was the colonial Deputy Secretary of the Burmese Government.
During World War II she was evacuated to Rose Bay to continue her schooling at Sacred Heart Convent in Sydney. She studied classics (Greek and Latin) at Cambridge University and in 1967 elevated her degree to a Master’s.
Mary worked for the BBC in London from 1954 to 1956. She emigrated to Toronto, Canada in 1956 where she worked for the CBC as a production assistant. It was here that she married Kandiah “Kandy” Shivanandan (d. 2010) with whom she had two children.
Mary then conducted research and writing across the cross-disciplines of population studies, breastfeeding, natural fertility, medical ethics and in defence of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae.
Despite the expanse of her life, she received her licentiate and doctorate in sacred theology from the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family in 1991 and 1995. See her remarkable CV here.
In 2008, Mary was a pioneer in scholarly and evangelising work which brought together social sciences, philosophy and theology in her studies into the revived biblical anthropology of Pope St John Paul II, sometimes called in shorthand, the Theology of the Body.
Mary was a wonderfully effective and gentle teacher while she served as a lecturer at the John Paul II Institute in Washington and abroad.
Her work remains a foundational and original exploration of the lifetime work by Pope John Paul II, dedicated to the theology and philosophy of the human person, human embodiment and human relationships.
An excellent text for her thought can be found in her 2009 book, Crossing the Threshold of Love: A New Vision of Marriage in the Light of John Paul II’s Anthropology, which remains an essential textbook on the thought of the late Polish pontiff. Her book is rightly praised as exhaustive, authoritative, clear and accessible.
Professor Shivanandan also explored the theological contributions of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) in his work, which complemented the thought of John Paul II so well, in this case writing on the theology of biblical revelation, ecclesiology and liturgical revival. She considered his work important in providing practical and original insights into the collaboration of men and women in the Church.
Mary pointed out in an insightful interview that the Catholic view of the role of men and women was built upon the distinctive sacramentality and fruitfulness of the male and female incarnation. A fallen world, which she freely acknowledged scrambles and weakens the true “equality” of the sexes, requires the salvific words and work of Jesus Christ to reveal afresh:
“From all accounts this has become a major problem in our society. Without the right kind of masculine leadership – sometimes called servant leadership – feminine values cannot flourish. Christ, of course, is the model for servant leadership. The recent document gives a hint of this in talking about Christ’s power as ‘neither one of domination nor of power as understood by the world’.”
Professor Shivanandan and her John Paul II Institute colleague in Washington D.C., Professor Michael Hanby, had frequently given voice to the underlying ontological and metaphysical problems associated with practices that are touted as healthcare in our society. These include some of the processes used in IVF and pre-implantation embryo selection, which are grouped under the title of assisted reproductive technologies (ART).
Not only do these technologies endanger unborn lives and contribute to the eugenics of embryo selection and destruction, they also contribute to the objectification of women themselves. She points out in the excellent online journal Humanum in her overview of a number of ART-critical books that in this respect, Christian women and non-Christian radical feminists share a deep concern.
She writes: “Women are particularly conscious of the power of technology to transform nature. They see clearly the ‘logic of the machine’ which objectivises the woman’s body so that it is treated like a thing that can be bought and sold.”
Both professors would argue that the “logic of the machine” infects not only our private family “choices”; it risks our societal attitude to humanity itself.
While agreeing with many of the anti-ART radical feminists in their alarm and opposition to the many harms of reproductive technologies, Professor Shivanandan makes a more profound observation about contemporary Western culture and its tragic unbridled appetite for what appears to be quick and clever satisfactions:
“Limits inevitably involve frustration of desire, and this is what our culture refuses to countenance. Limits to desire are met with more technology to mitigate the effects of uncontrolled desire, especially in the area of sexuality.”
Professor Mary Shivanandan’s life and thought remain a gold standard particularly for women working in theology.
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Mark Makowiecki in the last month has excelled our expectations with interviews with the ever pithy Dr Philippa Martyr on the book about her recent study of the Australian Church; medieval historian and theologian Dr Rachel Fulton Brown; the Dawson Society’s Dr Tom Gourlay; and Quadrant’s Barry Spurr.
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Anna Krohn
Executive Director
Thomas More Centre
