but that also gets a nod in the Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Episcopal Church, where there is usually an altar dedicated to her in the church called "The Lady Altar".
When I got out of college and before I got my federal job, I was a substitute teacher in the Philly schools and was assigned to junior and senior high schools in what was dubbed one of the "worst" areas within the district at the time - which included parts of North & Northeast Philly - Juniata Park, Frankford, Kensington, & Port Richmond. That area had one of the highest teacher and student absentee rates so continually needed subs. I eventually ended up doing long-term subbing (for teachers who had medical or educational sabbaticals) toward the latter part of my time doing subbing.
At the time, i was only a few years older than most of the kids, so we seemed to quickly bond, and they told me how the neighborhoods were split by race/ethnicity, where back then (and still today to a degree), from Broad St. to 8th St. was black, from 7th St. to B street was Hispanic (but also Arab), and from C Street to Richmond St. (by the Delaware River), was white. And my last long-term sub position was at Kensington High, where the school was amazingly 1/3rd, 1/3rd, 1/3rd, drawing students from all 3 sections. I ended up with 5 classes and 125 students (with some of the classes that had upwards of 40 kids).
You had Polish Catholics in that area as well, reinforcing the Hispanic Catholics, where many of their homes often had some kind of small altar to Mary with the infant Jesus, along with a crucifix on the wall. It was just part of their lives (in a cultural sense), where their grandparents and great-grandparents were fixtures in the little Catholic churches dotted all over their neighborhoods (many of them now closed), and it was an overlay that attempted to instill and reinforce some kind of "moral guardrails" within a household.
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