American Patroness

A vital collection of interdisciplinary essays that illuminates the significance of Marian shrines and promises to teach scholars how to “read” them for decades to come.

American Patroness: Marian Shrines and the Making of US Catholicism is a collection of twelve essays that examine the historical and contemporary roles of Marian shrines in US Catholicism. The essays in this collection use historical, ethnographic, and comparative methods to explore how Catholics have used Marian devotion to make an imprint on the physical and religious landscape of the United States. Using the dynamic malleability of Marian shrines as a starting place for studying US Catholicism, each chapter reconsiders the American religious landscape from the perspective of a single shrine to Mary and asks: What does this shrine reveal about US Catholicism and about American religion?

Each of the contributors in American Patroness examines why and how Marian shrines persist in the twenty-first century and subsequently uses that examination to re-read contemporary US Catholicism. Because shrines are not neutral spaces—they reflect and shape the elastic yet strict boundaries of what counts as Catholic identity, and who controls prayer practices—the studies in this collection also shed light on the contested dynamics of these holy sites. American Patroness demonstrates that Marian shrines continue to be places where an American Catholic identity is continuously worked on, negotiations about power occur, and Marian relationships are fostered and nurtured in spaces that are simultaneously public and intimate.

Introduction | 1
Katherine Dugan and Karen E. Park

Part I: Mapping Marian Places

“Lourdes of the Southwest”:
The Borderlands Transformation of a Nineteenth-Century French Shrine
Adrienne Nock Ambrose | 21

“Guadalupe Represents La Cultura”:
A Mexican American Mural-Shrine in California
Lloyd Barba | 44

A Global Odyssey: Our Lady of Perpetual Help and the Promise to “Make Her Known”
Patrick J. Hayes | 67

The Battle of Bayside: Contesting Religious Topographies in an Urban Apparition Site
Joseph P. Laycock | 92

Part II: Shifting Marian Meanings

Fatima Family Shrine: Reinterpreting Mary on the South Dakota Prairie
Katherine Dugan | 117

Consolation’s Many Faces:
Ethnic Intersections at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Carey, Ohio
David J. Endres | 139

American Czestochowa:
Polish Piety and Haitian Hybridities of Marian Meaning in Pennsylvania
Terry Rey | 159

The National Shrine Basilica of Our Lady of Fatima:
Meaning Making at a Cold War Niagara Falls Tourist Shrine
Karen E. Park | 183

Part III: Devotional Creativity at Marian Shrines

Digital Devotion: Marian Shrines Online
Kayla Harris | 205

Our Lady of the Underpass: Sacred and Social Space in the City
Stephen Selka | 222

Materiality and Attachment:
Universality and Locality at Roman Catholic Pilgrimage Sites
Claire Vaughn and James S. Bielo | 244

“These Are Our Saints”:
A Lourdes Shrine, the St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children, and the Catholic Remaking
of Cognitive Disability
Andrew Walker-Cornetta | 261

Acknowledgments | 287

Bibliography | 289

List of Contributors | 307

Index | 309