My interest in American Marian piety and theology in the United States began through stumbling upon some online resources over 10 years ago when I was doing my doctoral work. For some light relief, I began spending my spare time reading the work of various American Franciscan theologians, particularly Father Peter Damian Fehlner, O.F.M. Conv. (1931–2018). Mariologies like Fehlner’s were a world apart from my own scholarly formation in English academia, and were thus a breath of fresh air, albeit sometimes a little intoxicating.
The Franciscan strand of Mariology tends toward “maximalist” approaches to understanding the Blessed Virgin’s significance, associated particularly with St. Maximilian Kolbe (1894–1941). Kolbe famously described Mary as “quasi-Trinitarian,” meaning just one step away (“quasi-”) from the divine personhood of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
These writings are richer in piety and devotion than in academic rigor. This is not to suggest any lack of academic quality but rather to say that the governing framework is an intense life of faith in and reverence for Mary herself, as opposed to critical or self-consciously sophisticated thinking. This was just the tonic for a tired doctoral student — one I have rediscovered now, years later, in the world of academic bureaucracy.
I was struck by the importance of 20th-century media for the writers I was interested in. This seems distinctively American, insofar as American culture has led the way in Catholic TV, radio, online ministries, apps and so on. I also have noticed a tendency in America to engage obscure matters of Marian doctrine with contemporary social and ethical debates. Until relatively recently, Europe has had virtually no multimedia content related to Catholic theology.
My time at the Marian Library was immensely helpful insofar as I discovered resources that made clear that these attributes I found so surprising in my younger years were nothing new or exceptional at all; in fact, they were typical of the climate and culture of mid-20th-century Marian piety in the U.S. This was the culture in which my sources, like Fehlner, had been formed themselves, and it became clear through my studies in Dayton how important that context was in their formation.
Of particular importance for me was the remarkable Sutton File. There, I discovered that Marian “maximalism” was clearly a feature of U.S. Catholic life in the late 1940s and the 1950s. The dogma of the Assumption was promulgated in 1950, and there were calls for it among U.S. Catholics in the years immediately prior. For example, the Sutton File includes a program for a Marian Day at Holy Name College in Washington, D.C., in 1949, featuring performances of Marian music interspersed with talks on typically maximalist topics like “The Universal Mediation of the Blessed Mother,” by Father George Hanagan, O.F.M.
I learned that a rich culture of Marian devotion was a standard feature of U.S. Catholic life in those decades. I was particularly struck by the news articles about the many new Marian shrines and retreat centers that opened at that time.
I also encountered many reports about activities related to the Marian Year declared by Pius XII in 1954. The fact that so many periodicals were reporting on this and the issues of the day suggests that modern media engagement was well underway in this period. One news report discusses at length one Franciscan community’s declaration of a “Marian Crusade” to “return American culture to Christ,” for example.
I was delighted to discover a wealth of resources about Father Juniper B. Carol, O.F.M. (1911–1990), who is almost entirely unknown in the U.K. It became clear that Carol is the central figure in the development of the Mariological writings that interest me. I read an interview with him conducted in 1956 and a complete bibliography of his writings, most of which I would otherwise be unaware, and I studied his main contributions to the field, which are within the Marian Library’s collection.
I am grateful for the Marian Fellowships program for this wonderful opportunity. It was an unforgettable experience at what is surely one of the world’s premier storehouses of learned resources on the Blessed Virgin.
The complete article “Immersion in American Piety” is available in eCommons.
— Written by Jacob Phillips, a professor of systematic theology at St. Mary’s University in Twickenham, England and the recipient of the 2025 Visiting Scholar Fellowship.
