You might have seen it in a movie, or perhaps in the possession of one of your Catholic friends—they may even occasionally wear it around their necks! A Rosary can be made from all kinds of materials, but they all look pretty similar: five sets of ten small beads, interspersed with five larger beads, arranged in a circle with a cross hanging from it. The Rosary, however, is more than just a physical item—the beads are simply a tool for devotion, intended not as decoration but as a way to facilitate prayer. So Catholics sometimes talk about the Rosary as a ritual, and sometimes as a physical object.
The Rosary is a very important part of Catholic devotion—it sits alongside the Mass as a primary means by which Catholics are instructed to engage with their religion. Pope after pope has encouraged the Rosary as a daily practice. What, therefore, is the Roman Church asking Christians to do every day?
The first thing to know about the Rosary as a devotional practice is that each bead represents a repetition of a particular prayer. The different beads represent different prayers, with the large beads indicating the “Our Father,” or the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus gives in the Sermon on the Mount. This prayer is repeated five times during the Rosary. The smaller beads represent repetitions of the “Hail Mary,” a short prayer addressed to Mary, the mother of Jesus. There are a few other shorter prayers included at the beginning and end as well, but the heart of the prayer is the five “decades” of the Hail Mary. Depending on the day and season, there are different “mysteries,” or aspects of Mary’s life, that Catholics are encouraged to meditate on as they pray through the decades.
The second thing to know about the Rosary is that it is directed primarily—if not entirely—toward Mary, the mother of Jesus. It is devotion rendered not to God, but to the Mother of God. The “Hail Mary” prayer both directs praise and honor to Mary and requests that Mary herself pray for the petitioner.
The history of how a prayer directed not to God but to Mary came to occupy such an outsized role in Catholic devotion is complicated, and I won’t recount it all here. But the Rosary in its primitive form first emerges through the Dominicans in the 14th and 15th centuries. It was never a universal practice until after the Protestant Reformation. Marian devotion grew in the post–Council of Trent era but reached its modern form after a series of supposed apparitions of Mary in the 19th and 20th centuries. Popes in this era codified a number of doctrines about Mary and increasingly set her at the center of religious devotion. Marian devotion was influenced by the growth of pietism and evangelical enthusiasm in the Protestant world, and in the 20th century by the charismatic movement.
Should you pray the Rosary? The short answer is an emphatic NO. If Mary were to reappear before us, the first thing she would say is, “Please stop praying to me.” The very idea is offensive and absurd. I can think of nothing more satanic than convincing a large number of devout people to direct their prayers away from God and toward a mere human, no matter how honorable she was. Those who developed and encouraged Marian devotion will have a lot to answer for before the throne of God. Here are some reasons why you shouldn’t pray the Rosary:
We are not to pray to anyone but God. This should be glaringly obvious from the whole Bible. God is jealous for our devotion, vigorous in expelling those who offer worship to anyone but Him. You cannot pray to Mary—who is dead and merely human—and expect that God would be honored by it. In truth, those who pray to Mary are praying to a demon.
We are to worship and pray only as instructed in God’s Word. When Nadab and Abihu, the two sons of Aaron, attempted to offer worship to God in a way He had not commanded, their good motives did not matter; they were destroyed as a warning. God never commands us anywhere to offer prayers to Mary. No author of Scripture even hints at it.
Jesus speaks against mindless repetition and empty phrases in prayer. “Do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do.” Even if the Rosary were filled exclusively with prayers to God, it would still be unhelpful, because we are not meant to pray by simply repeating a few phrases over and over. We are to pray from the heart.
The entire premise of praying to Mary is mistaken and undermines the gospel. It presumes that holy men and women of the past, who supposedly became more righteous through their meritorious deeds, are somehow closer to God and more likely to be heard. Mary stands closest because she is viewed as the holiest woman who ever lived and as God’s own mother. Therefore, her prayers are thought to be especially effective, and she is believed to mediate for us. But our prayers already go to God through a Mediator—One appointed by God, who is both God and man, and therefore able to perfectly mediate. There is no need to go through anyone else. We already have full and free access to the throne of God. Praise God for this!
If you are Catholic and would like to talk more about this, please check out our church on Sunday or feel free to reach out to me!