A survey by Lawrence Cunningham, in Commonweal.

The piece is a decent overview, although any critical notes are reserved for certain parties, while other parties are preserved. So, the mild snide tone that permeates the Marian devotion paragraph:

If the new ecclesial movements or affiliation with existing religious communities are oriented toward established groups, one can still observe older trends. In this country, for example, there remains a thirst among some for a type of Marian devotionalism associated with purported apparition sites, whether in this country (for example, Bayside, New York) or abroad (for example, Medjugorje). Such devotionalism got a fair impetus from John Paul II’s rather baroque enthusiasm for devotion to Mary, as seen, for instance, in his conviction that Our Lady of Fátima saved his life when he was struck by an assassin’s bullet-a bullet the pope later enshrined in a statue depicting Our Lady of Fátima. It may also account in part for the widespread popularity of Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ, whose script was influenced by the extravagant “revelations” of Anne Catherine of Emmerich, an early nineteenth-century German mystic. The rallying point for the recrudescence of these types of devotionalism is the cable channel EWTN, with its endless procession of priests swanning about in elaborate religious garb and preaching about this or that form of devotion.

slips away in the Eastern spirituality section:

Given the therapeutic bent of our culture and the concomitant popularity of self-help literature, there have been some dubious attempts to link these approaches with the spiritual plane. The mildly faddish interest in the Enneagram or the Jungian-inspired Myers/Briggs assessment model, for example, has attained a certain hold in some quarters of the current Catholic scene. Add to this the advertisements one reads for retreat houses offering labyrinth walks, massage therapy, specialized retreats for those who wish to combine Christian contemplative practices and Zen sitting (zazen), courses in male spirituality, hermitage experiences, and so on, and you begin to get the sense that Catholic spirituality may become too capacious an umbrella. Furthermore, the intrusion of new-age practices and other experimental approaches has raised enough concern that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has issued warnings, not always prudently formulated, against false mysticism and/or syncretism.

That first paragraph I cited could be faulted on a number of other levels aside from tone. First, in tying in Marian devotion to either condemned (Bayside) or questioned (Medjugorje) apparitions, he immediately renders the whole thing questionable in the reader’s eyes. This account also gives a radically diminished picture of the growing appeal of "traditional" devotions. Were all those kids praying the rosary at World Youth Day Bayside devotees? Seems that WYD could merit a mention, anyway, as could, say the numerous spiritual conferences held around the country, either under diocesan auspices (the recent Eucharistic congresses in Atlanta, for example, which have been very successful, or last fall’s huge Eucharistic Congress in Minneapolis-St. Paul) or organized by groups like Call to Holiness. He could have rung up one of the organizations dedicated to promoting Perpetual Adoration – they actually have fairly good stats, since parishes contact them for support and information when starting Adoration.

Could have – and should have to get a more accurate and fair picture.

I won’t quibble with his description of the popularity of spiritual writers like Rolheiser – he is a best-seller and popular speaker. Taken as a whole, the piece is all right, but could have benefited from either equal-opportunity snideness or no snideness at all….

Oh, and something I forgot to mention when I posted this earlier – the piece would have benefited from a discussion of the increased and increasing popularity of the Liturgy of the Hours, in some form or other, among laity and in parishes.