From 1981 to 2016, she was a professor at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, where she was head of the religious studies department.
[1][2] She graduated from Mount Mercy College in 1967, and earned a Master of Divinity degree from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in 1973.
[4][5] Laffey taught at the College of the Holy Cross for 35 years, from 1981 to 2016, and introduced courses on feminist, postcolonial and ecological perspectives on theology.
[3] Laffey was a member of the Sisters of Mercy religious order in the 1970s, and participated in the Women's Ordination Conference.
[3] As a prominent woman in Catholic scholarship in the United States, Laffey was called upon to comment on the church's positions concerning women, including Pope John Paul II's letter "On the Dignity of Women" (1988).