FACT CHECK: Debunking Protestant Errors About Catholicism! “The Rosary is worshipping Mary and vain repetition!”

Claim: “The Bible nowhere tells us to pray a Rosary, and it is vain repetition which Jesus condemned. The Rosary puts the focus on Mary and it is a way of worshipping her.”

Fact check: False.

In our ongoing series answering common Protestant objections to Catholicism, Catholic convert and notable truther Nina Leone asked about the Catholic devotion of the Rosary, and how it pertains to Jesus’ statements regarding vain repetition in prayer, as well as its role in the wider context of Marian veneration. So let us dig right in.

First off, right off the bat, whenever I am asked, “Where does the Bible tell us to pray the Rosary?” My answer is pretty straightforward: “Nowhere.” Or another rendition of this objection comes like this: “Where did Jesus command the Apostles to pray the Rosary?” My response: “Nowhere.” Lastly, I have heard it phrased this way: “Where did Jesus or Peter or Paul ever pray the Rosary in the Bible?” My theological retort: “Nowhere.” At this point, the objector often feels vindicated in their disdain for Catholicism. I hear comments such as, “Aha! There it is! You admit it, you papist! The Bible nowhere commands us to pray the Rosary!” And I calmly say, “Yep. That is correct. Now, tonight, when I pray my Rosary, I will offer it up for your conversion, as well.”

The reality is that the Bible does not mention many types of specific devotional prayer. I remember some years ago, married couples were all practicing The Love Dare, based on the film Fireproof. It was a 40 day practice which included journaling, challenges, meditations, and prayer. It became quite the rage for a time. Marriage ministries across the country were incorporating it into their programs. In all that time, I never heard anyone say, “Where does the Bible tell us to practice the Love Dare? Where did Jesus command St. Peter to do the Love Dare with his wife? Where did the Apostles ever do the Love Dare? Aha, you heretic! The Bible nowhere commands us to practice the Love Dare!”

Obviously, the Bible would not have mentioned the Love Dare. It was a prayer devotional that came about 2,000 years after St. John the Apostle had died, when the Fireproof producers decided to put it together to help bring spiritual help to struggling marriages. Nor would the Bible have mentioned the Rosary, as it is a devotional prayer that came about 1,200 years after St. John the Apostle had died, when the Blessed Virgin Mary decided to teach it to St. Dominic to help bring spiritual help to the Church, the world, and struggling sinners.

Likewise, the Bible nowhere mentions prayer ministries, prayer chains, read the Bible in a year, flipbook calendars with a Scripture verse a day, Billy Graham prayer crusades, praise and worship music festivals, altar calls, Greg Laurie’s Harvest conferences, prayer apps for iPhones, fellowship outreach for Christian men, prayer journals for Christian women, Bible camp for Christian kids, the Five Love Languages, Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul, 40 Days for Life, Christmas caroling at the mall, watching the Passion of the Christ during Lent, daily devotionals, ten minute prayers that begin with “Father God,” pastors asking every five minutes “Can I get an Amen,” baby dedication services, blessing stones, cross necklaces with the Our Father imprinted in them, WWJD bracelets, marriage retreats, etc.

So then why do Protestants and Non Denominationalists practice such things? Especially if the Bible nowhere commands them? I am pretty positive that the answers, in some way, will mirror something similar to the reasons why Christians pray the Rosary. It helps us to meditate on the life of Christ, it equips us to imitate Jesus, it strengthens our faith and fortifies our souls, it gives us a consistent and habitual formation for prayer, it directs our mind towards Heaven. The only distinction, then, is that the Rosary was given to us directly by the Blessed Virgin Mary at the request of Jesus. Whereas nobody in Heaven has yet to ask us to download a prayer app for our iPhone or read the Bible in a year.

So why do not see a reference to the Rosary in Sacred Scripture? Simply stated, it did not come to us until the early 13th century. By contrast, praise and worship music festivals, which are inundated with repetitive prayer via song (“How great is our God, sing with me, how great is our God, and all will see how great, how great, is our God… sing it again everyone, let’s really pray it out this time”), were a 20th century phenomenon. I do not go looking for Chris Tomlin headlining a Gracefest in the Bible, nor do I go looking for the word “Rosary.” Rather, I go looking for the plethora of commands for us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) and to grow in faith, hope, and charity. If Heaven decides to give us a prayer tool to help us with this, I will take it. And if Chris Tomlin comes up with a catchy song that helps me as well, perhaps I will sing it. But my priority will go to the one given directly from Heaven.

The Rosary is a devotional prayer, plain and simple. The Bible nowhere says that every form of devotion and prayer that we are to pray must be written down in the pages of the New Testament and must have been specifically revealed before the death of the last Apostle. If that were the case, all the above mentioned prayer activities and faith formation devotions would all be cancelled, as well. The Rosary was given to St. Dominic at a time when many Christians were becoming very secular, many leaders were becoming very godless, and Muslims were continuing their destructive wars against Christendom. In the midst of all this, Our Lady taught this beautiful devotion to St. Dominic and asked him to help spread and propagate it so that Christians could receive help from Heaven in their spiritual and temporal concerns. It consists of meditating on the life of Jesus through the heart and soul of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It is pondering the teachings and works of Christ through her eyes.

Luke 2:19, “But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.” In the Rosary, with Mary, we also treasure the mysteries and scenes of Our Lord’s life, and we ponder them in our hearts. We unite ourselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, so we can treasure them as she did, and as she still does in Heaven. Luke 1:46, “And Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord.'” When we see Jesus through the soul of Mary, we see Jesus through a magnifying glass, for this is what Scripture says is precisely what her soul does. Her soul magnifies the Lord. Who among us or reading this article that truly loves Jesus, and has a desire to love Him more, would not want to see Him magnified? The reason her soul magnifies Him is because nobody in history ever more perfectly imitate Him.

St. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” Why would St. Paul dare say we should imitate him? Simply because he himself is imitating Christ. All the more so, we ought to imitate Mary, because no one more sublimely and impeccably imitated Jesus than her. How do we know this? Because, according to the assessment of Heaven’s perspective, she is “Full of Grace” (Luke 1:28, Greek Kecharitomene, literally overflowing with grace), whereas we are called to “Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). Even St. Paul had to keep growing in the grace of Jesus, and yet he still told the Corinthians to imitate him. Mary is overflowing with grace, so even more so, we should imitate her. And the end goal of imitating any Saint is to just advance in holiness through a deeper imitation of Christ Himself.

You might try to object, “I do not need to imitate any Saint! I go straight to the source which is Jesus!” Well, you can take your argument up with St. Paul, who told the Corinthians to imitate him. You can also take your argument up with any other Protestant or Non Denominationalist who has ever been inspired by the example of faith set down by their parents, friends, pastors, preachers, teachers, evangelists, authors, coworkers, prayer warriors, retreat counselors, mimistry leaders, etc. As for Christians, we have no problem being inspired by the lives of the Saints, especially the Blessed Virgin Mary. Such pious examples only further aid us in striving to imitate Our Lord and Savior. If you want a Biblical example of what it means to extol the faith of believers, simply check out Hebrews 11. I will not quote it in full here, but it is commonly referred to as the “Hall of Faith” in Sacred Scripture, as it speaks about the holy example set by the Saints of the Old Covenant. So too, the early martyr Church frequently spoke about the holy example set by the Saints who walked with Christ. And succeeding generations spoke about the holy example set by the Saints of the martyr era, and so on and so on. You can try to argue that speaking about the faith of men and women detracts from the glory of God, but God apparently disagrees with your assessment based on what we find in Sacred Scripture and throughout Christian history. The artist is always the object of glory when one is praising the art. God receives even greater glory when we marvel over His masterpiece collection found in the Saints of His Church.

You will be hard pressed to find a prayer more remarkable and unique than the Rosary. It is part meditative and part vocal. As we vocally recite specific prayers from the heart, we simultaneously are reflecting on the life of Christ. So it is a prayer that packs a two-fold punch of holiness and blessing. The vocal prayers are merely the soundtrack; the substance is contained in the actual meditation of the Mysteries. Similarly to watching a movie with a brilliant orchestral score, or being present at a graduation ceremony where the marching band continually performs Pomp and Circumstance, so too the vocal prayers accompany the deep reflection into the various scenes and stages of the life of Our Lord, from His conception at the Annunciation in the womb of Mary inaugurating the Word becoming Flesh, to His Baptism in the Jordan River inaugurating His public ministry, to His prayer in agony at Gethsemane inaugurating His Passion, to the Descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost inaugurating the birth of His Church, to His glorious reunion in Heaven with Mary, to everything in between. It is truly a prayer like none other. If you have never prayed it before, I invite you to try it. No amount of flowery words about its power to bring peace to the soul can suffice when compared to actually praying it so you can experience the benefits yourself, as attested to by Saints throughout history.

It is worth mentioning here that the primary prayers of the Rosary are of course all rooted and drawn from Sacred Scripture. We pray five Our Fathers, which was explicitly taught by Our Lord in Matthew 6:9-13. And we pray roughly fifty Hail Marys, a prayer composed by phrases found explicitly in Scripture.

“Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.” Found in Luke 1:28 when Mary is greeted by the Archangel Gabriel. Interestingly enough, St. Gabriel’s greeting is even more profound than the way we commonly recite this prayer. In his greeting, which was done on behalf of God in Heaven, St. Gabriel uses the phrase “Kaire,” which is more than just “Greetings!” It is a term designated for royalty, as seen for example in historical phrases such as “Kaire Caesar,” Hail Caesar. Here, an Archangel from Heaven offers Mary a royal greeting. Most profound, however, is that he never calls her by name, as we do in the prayer. Rather, even more powerfully, he addresses her with a title, “Kecharitomene,” which in Greek is a perfect passive participle. It literally means, “She who has been perfected in grace in a past event, and is presently perfected in that grace, and will continue to be perfected in grace ongoing into the future.” Amazing! All of that is packed into this title.

“Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” This is found in Luke 1:41-42, as part of St. Elizabeth’s greeting to her cousin Mary. Notice the connection immediately drawn by St. Elizabeth between Mary and Jesus. She gives a double blessing, one to Our Lady and one to Our Lord.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God.” We find this in the very next breath from St. Elizabeth in Luke 1:43, when she calls Mary, “The mother of my Lord.” Some may attempt to separate the titles “Lord” and “God” here, but it is a futile effort. The same Jesus is being spoken of, and He is Lord and God, as St. Thomas even confesses in John 20:28 (“My Lord and my God”), and as the Psalmist proclaims in Psalms 100:3, “Know that the Lord is God!” The old Nestorian heresy of trying to separate Jesus as Man from Jesus as God was squashed long ago in the 5th century when Mary was declared to be Theotokos, literally God-bearer, since she carried Jesus in her womb and gave birth to Him, and He is one Divine Person with two Natures. He is truly, one and the same, the God Man. Mary did not give birth to a Nature; she gave birth to a Person.

“Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” Sacred Scripture commands us to pray for one another. “Pray for one another” (James 5:16). “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people” (1 Timothy 2:1). In fact, we see at nearly the start of all his letters, St. Paul begins by saying how he never ceases to pray for the ones to whom he is writing.

The passage from 1 Timothy 2 is of particular interest here, because this is where St. Paul famously writes, “There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus” (1Timothy 2:5). And yet, he begins by urging that we pray and intercede (mediate) for all people. The only reason any of us have any spiritual authority to pray and intercede for others, for their salvation (“God desires all men to be saved,” 1 Timothy 2:4), is because we are in the Body of Christ, and He is our Head. He is the Vine, we are the branches. He is the Groom, and we are the Bride, and thus we are one flesh with Him. Since He is the one who bridges Heaven and Earth together as the unique God Man, we are then able to pray and intercede for others since we are united to Him and His Holy Spirit dwells within us when we are in a state of grace.

This is one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted passages by Protestants, because rather than teaching us that there is no reason to ask Mary to pray for us since Jesus is our Mediator (as they claim), we see instead that it teaches the exact opposite. Mary is likewise commanded to pray for all people, as all of us are. And the only reason she (or any of us) have this capability is precisely because we are in His Christ since we are His Body, and He is the one mediator between God and man. Thus, connected to Him, our prayers carry efficacy. Apart from Him, they would be meaningless. And thus, we ask her to pray to God for us in the Hail Mary. All prayer is ultimately directed to God alone. The Saints pray to God for us, just as we pray to God for others as well.

“But Mary is dead, she can not hear these petitions,” surely you will say. Where does Sacred Scripture say that God is the God of the dead? It actually says quite the opposite. Those who die in grace are very much alive, much more than we are in this life. Our Lord says, “And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Mark 12:26-27). Notice how Jesus says this in the context of mentioning Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, three individuals who had long died before Moses. Today, He could just as well say, “I am the God of Mary, and the God of Peter, and the God of Paul, and I am not God of the dead, but of the living.” I will save a future article to explore the Communion of the Saints doctrine more in depth.

At this point, you might ask, “But why do you pray fifty Hail Mary’s compared to only five Our Father’s?” Well, our point stands that all prayer is directed to God. So if I pray five thousand Hail Mary’s, those are five thousand requests for Mary to pray to God for me (and we know she will honor this request every single time). If I ask you a hundred times to pray for me, then that is potentially a hundred additional prayers to God for me (assuming you actually do it every single time). If I ask all my friends on social media to pray to God for me, and they decide to share that post and it goes viral, then that could be perhaps tens of thousands of prayers to God for me (assuming every one who reads the post actually prays for me).

The only difference I can determine between asking a Saint to pray for me as opposed to asking a fellow Christian to pray for me, is twofold. First, “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (James 5:16). So if the Saints in Heaven are in the presence of the Triune God, their prayers to God for us would avail more than those on Earth since we are still in the process of overcoming our sins and vices, and growing in holiness. Second, the Saints in Heaven are capable of devoting unlimited time to pray to God for us, whereas believers on Earth may promise to do so but could get distracted or busy and forget. They are also limited in their capacity to devote time to pray. Again, this point can be expanded upon in a future article dedicated specifically to the Communion of the Saints.

In practice, we see no distinction between asking Mary and the Saints to God for us and asking believers on Earth to pray to God for us. So anytime you have ever asked a pastor, friend, relative, prayer group, ministry, etc to pray for you, we would say it is identical, in practice, to asking Mary and the Saints to pray for you as well. And we conclude each Hail Mary with, “Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.” This only further validates that all prayer is ultimately directed to God as its end.

An additional point can be found with the analogy of currency. If I asked you which you would rather have, 99 pennies or one single dollar bill, which would you pick? Most likely the dollar bill. But why? Because the single dollar bill carries more worth than the 99 pennies, even though the quantity of pennies offered is greater than that of the dollar bill. In fact, it would take exactly one hundred pennies to equal the value and worth of one single dollar bill. In a similar way, we could say that ten Hail Marys is perhaps roughly on par with one single Our Father. Of course, that does not discount the value of the Hail Marys. This is in part what makes the Rosary such a powerful and unique prayer, second only to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. It combines the power of the Our Father along with the Hail Mary and puts it all together as the backdrop of the meditation of the Mysteries.

The most common objection I hear in regards to the Rosary is Our Lord’s words concerning “vain repetition” in prayer from Marthew 6:7. “And in praying use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that they shall be heard for their many words.” The argument then goes that repeating the Our Father and the Hail Mary falls under the category of vain repetition.

First, context is key. Exactly two verses later, in Matthew 6:9, Our Lord says, “In this way, then, you shall pray.” He then teaches them the Our Father prayer, also known as the Lord’s prayer. His concern then in Matthew 6:7 is not about repeating prayer, but rather about vain repetition of prayer. This distinction is lost on those who think the issue is repetitive prayer. Our Lord would not contradict Himself within the space of two sentences. In teaching the Our Father, He says, “You shall pray,” indicating a prayer to be repeated for future use.

This makes sense considering passages such as Psalm 136, which is a biblical prayer written under divine inspiration that has the refrain “His steadfast love endures for ever” a total of 26 times in that Psalm. This also explains why even most modern praise and worship hymns will repeat phrases over and over again, as mentioned above with “How Great is our God’ by Chris Tomlin, which many Protestants and Non Denominationalists have no problem praying (through singing) repeatedly.

This also accounts for what we see in Apocalypse 4:8, where we read, “And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to sing, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!'” Again, even in Heaven, we see there is no problem with repetitive prayer. We see yet another example of this from Daniel 3:35-65, where this prayer is repeated 31 times: “Bless the Lord… sing praise to him and highly exalt Him forever.”

In 2 Corinthians 12:8-10, St. Paul writes that he pleaded with the Lord at least three times with the same petition. “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'” We even have the example of Our Lord Himself in Mark 14:33-39, when in the garden of Gethsemane, He prays on at least three occasions, “Remove this chalice from me; yet not what I will, but what You will.” The passage specifically tells us, “And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words.” In other words, He is repeating the prayer. That is repetition. Right from the example of Jesus Himself.

So Sacred Scripture offers us many examples of prayers that are repeated verbatim, i.e. repetitive prayers. But how can that be if Our Lord condemned “vain repetition” when praying? The answer is found in the qualifying word, “vain.” He does not condemn repetition in prayer, as we have already seen, but He does condemn vain repetition in prayer. The Greek word for “vain repetition” is battalogēsēte, which literally means, “to speak without thinking.” This gives the connotation of babbling redundantly to give the appearance of deep piety and profound prayer.

There are two takeaways from this. First, Our Lord uses heathens as His example. Their repetitive prayers were done in vain because they were offered to false gods who did not exist in reality. An example of this is found in 1 Kings 18:26-29, with the prophets of the false god Baal: “And they took the bull that was given them, and they prepared it and called upon the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, “O Baal, answer us!” But there was no voice, and no one answered. And they limped around the altar that they had made. And at noon Elijah mocked them, saying, “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them. And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice. No one answered; no one paid attention.” Notice how the holy prophet Elijah mocks their vain attempts at calling down their false god, which they did repeatedly for hours, from morning until noon. Our Lord is thus cautioning His people to not turn to false gods in their attempts to be heard in prayer. In the Rosary, we turn to the Father as Jesus instructed His followers to do, and as Elijah did in response to the prophets of Baal.

Secondly, we see that Our Lord cautions us not to pray merely to receive praise for our apparent piety from people around us. He wants us to treat prayer as a true conversation between us and our Heavenly Father. St. Therese of Lisieux said, “For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven.” Jesus wants us to be sanctified through prayer, with conviction that God is truly attentive to our petitions and supplications. Every prayer uttered ought to lead us closer to the heart of the Father, and every prayer ought to be uttered with the certitude that the ears of Heaven are listening. This is true for every Our Father and every Hail Mary and every Glory Be.

There is a lesson here for Christians when they pray the Rosary. The goal is not to rush through it at rapid pace, babbling through the words and ignoring the meditations, thinking that God will send you some sort of temporal blessing because you got through it. In that case, one single Our Father would amount to infinitely more blessing, if prayed reverently, than through speed racing the entire Rosary. The same holds true for the Hail Mary. One reverent Hail Mary, humbly asking her to pray to God for you, goes further than 50 Hail Marys that are rushed in a matter of minutes. This is the real lesson of Matthew 6:7, and it shows why the Protestants miss it, because they think the emphasis is on repetition, when in actuality, it is focused on vain repetition, as Our Lord plainly said.

I often hear accusations of, “You Catholics worship Mary when you pray the Rosary!” This has always been a very strange comment to me. How does one compare praying to God, reverently and with humility, to allegedly worship of Mary? It is because they misunderstand the foundation, which is the doctrine of the Communion of Saints. That dogma teaches that the Saints in Heaven are alive in Christ and are able to pray to God for us, in the same way that we ask people here to do the same thing. And so they falsely and ignorantly conclude that 50 Hail Marys amounts to hyper emphasis on Mary. The truth is that 50 Hail Marys really means 50 additional prayers to God on our behalf.

You can either ask Pastor Bob to pray for you, or Bill and Judy who head the marriage ministry on Thursday evenings in the hall. Or you can also ask Mary to pray for you as well, which is even more effectual according to James 5:16 which was noted earlier. Bob and Bill and Judy may be nice and sincere people, to be sure. They may even have a Fish bumper decal on their car, shirts that say “Lettuce Pray” with a head of lettuce next to a cross, and a framed photo in the living room that says, “As for me and my house, we shall serve the Lord.” But they will never be greeted from an Archangel from Heaven with, “Hail, Full of Grace.” You can still ask them to pray for you, but you can ask Mary to pray for you as well. And no, you will not be worshipping Bob, Bill, or Judy when you do so. Nor will you be worshipping Mary.

The Christian Religion teaches that worship is to God alone. We honor and venerate His Saints, which brings Him additional glory. But we worship Him alone. Show me one catechism, Council, creed, papal statement, Church Father statement, or Scripture passage that tells us to worship Mary. I have never found one. On the contrary, what I have found is that worship of any creature, including Mary, is a mortal sin and a heresy in the Christian Religion, which leads to excommunication. And if the Protestants agree, it is because they borrowed this teaching from us. We are grateful that they correctly do this, and we now encourage them to accept every teaching revealed by God in the Christian Religion, including the directive to “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and to “Fix our eyes on Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2) such as meditating on His life and passion. The Rosary fulfills these commands perfectly.

Mary proclaimed, “For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:48). We pray for the conversion of all Protestants so they too can claim this fulfilled prophecy as it is found in the Catholic Church.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. We love you. Save souls. Amen.