Mariolaters

It was something to make us children. We began by being the shepherds who were the first to visit the new-born Christ, even before the wise men. We were not Catholics for any reason merely civic: we were Catholics in order to be able to have the privilege to say the rosary, and to kneel before the statue of Our Lady, and to kiss with our lips, which any immigrant amongst us had, the straw of the crib on Christmas day. We had a Church not founded on, not even buttressed by, any pride in our own talents.

— Daniel Sargent, Our Land and Our Lady, NY 1940, pp. 186–187.