For many Protestants the Rosary encapsulates everything that is wrong with Roman Catholicism – an excessive (and perhaps idolatrous) focus on Mary, rote mechanical prayers, and legalism. But is this a fair characterization? And might the Rosary have something to offer Protestants?
The “Praying to Mary” Objection: Since the Rosary consists largely of “Hail Mary”s many Protestants see this as one more instance of Catholic Mariolarty. But Catholics will tell you that these are not prayers to Mary in the sense that one would pray to God the Father or to Jesus, but are requests asking for Mary’s intercession. There seems to be no good argument that it’s wrong in principle to ask for the prayers of the Mother of God, if we allow, as we surely must, that it’s okay to ask for the prayers of other living Christians and that death doesn’t sever us from the Communion of the Saints (this is essentially Robert Jenson’s argument).
The “Vain Repetition” Objection: Do the Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s of the Rosary constitute “vain repetition” as condemned in the Bible? Well, most Protestants pray the Our Father (Lord’s Prayer) as well as other pre-written prayers (the Psalms, etc.) so the objection can’t be to written prayers per se. Moreover, it seems that what Jesus is condemning in, e.g. Matthew 6:7 is a kind of prayer that seeks to cajole the deity into doing what you want by means of repitition. By contrast, the Rosary is intended to be a prayer wherein one meditates on the Mysteries of Christ’s life. The movement of the fingers and the lips are supposed to help avoid distractions and allow the mind and spirit to enter into a deeper contemplative state. This isn’t to say that the Rosary can’t become a mechanical or self-centered prayer, but so can any other prayer, including the ones we come up with ourselves.
I’m not arguing that Protestants should pray the Rosary. I, for one, never have, and I admit to finding that devotions with a strong Marian element don’t come naturally to me. Nevertheless, it’s a form of prayer that’s nourished countless Christians for hundreds of years (and it predates the Reformation), so I don’t think it should be dismissed out of hand.
Any thoughts?
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.
I don’t have much thoughts. I’ve studied very little Mariology, but I did grow up pretty anti-Catholic. I’m not anymore, but I just haven’t given this topic much thought. Maybe in a few months
there’s something TO the repetition. think of mantras and meditation and reaching a calmer place.
i only pray hail marys when i’m really down and out, and usually i recite the prayer repeatedly.
granted, i grew up catholic and spent 12 years in parochial school. but, i gotta be frank with you, we didn’t do a whole lot of rosaries. more often than not, we said the our father — just like all the protestants.
I like the Rosary but prefer the office, for which the Rosary began as a substitute for the illiterate. Beads and repetitions are universal in religion and of course can be and are used well by Christians. ‘All can, some should, none must’ – this applies to Catholics!
Never understood the Protestant objection to the Hail Mary as half of it is a quotation from Luke! And from ‘pray for us’ it’s clear she’s not a goddess.
I like the rosary. It’s kind of a challenge to meditate on the mysteries while saying the prayers, but when you can pull it off it definitely takes you to a new mental state. In that regard, the Hail Mary’s seem to function as a timing mechanism as much as anything else.
I’m not particularly comfortable with the mysteries that have a Marian element, but I’ve found that if I think of Mary as a representative of the Church it helps.
I love the luminous mysteries.
I’m generally sympathetic to this sort of thing, but I am pretty uncomfortable with the rosary as it is often practiced.
I know that any catholic theologian will tell you Mary is not on a level with the Father, Son and Spirit, but the way Marian devotions are often carried out seem to give Mary an equal (or even greater) amount of attention than the Trinity or any other saint who is probably close to her in importance in the life of the church, like St. Paul, for example.
The practice, not the theology behind it, is what makes me uncomfortable.
Does she have a unique role in salvation history? yes. Is she the greatest of the saints? One could make that case pretty easily. But she remains a saint, important only for her position vis-a-vis Christ.
Here’s an interesting pamphlet by an evangelical Anglican clergyman talking about his discovery of the Rosary:
http://www.godspell.org.uk/writing/rosary.pdf
I’m inclined to agree with you Joshie in that, even though I can accept the arguments for invoking Mary and the other Saints in prayer, the focus on Mary in particular can seem to me … excessive. On the other hand, I’ve known people who say that their own Marian devotion has greatly deepened their relationship with Christ – that even though in theory it looks like it would be a zero-sum game (i.e. that focusing on Mary would detract from Christ) in practice it doesn’t work that way.
There was a rather shocking article in the CC a couple years ago by Methodist Bishop Gonzalez (I forget his first name! Raul maybe?) who has been working in Central America for a while, blasting Catholic catechisis in Latin America for, in his view, preaching and teaching Mary to the exclusion of Christ, the Holy Trinity, the Bible or anything else. He didn’t quite call Mariology the “opiate of the masses” but he might as well have. I’ve only ever been to Mexico so I can’t speak for the situation in Latin America as a whole, but it was a quite surprising article. I wish I could find it!!
Is this it?
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_25_121/ai_n8702623
That’s an interesting article and it does tend to confirm one’s suspicions that a theologically correct view of Mary can become something quite different in popular piety.
Though, doesn’t this skirt perilously close to Nestorianism:
“…Methodists and other mainstream denominations in Latin America tend to restrict the veneration of Mary. We recognize her as the special instrument that God chose to bring his Son among us, we recognize her as the mother of Jesus–but not as the mother of God.”
I can understand that talking about the Mother of God might make Protestants nervous, but we’re talking the third ecumenical council here – it’s hard to see how we can accept Chalcedon (which came later) but not Ephesus!
We have a zillion rosaries around the house, since my lapsed Catholic husband kept getting them for me, and then my mother-in-law gave us his childhood rosary. I can’t make myself say all those Hail Marys (though I understand the RC theological principle about being able to ask the dead to pray for us, the same as the living), but I’ve done the Chaplet of Divine Mercy.
The “vain repetition” objection makes no sense at all to me; there’s a huge difference between repetitive meditative prayer and the kind of repetition that was being criticized. I use repetitive prayers (mentally, of course, not spoken aloud) all the time during silent Quaker meeting for worship.
I think there are at least some Protestants who think that repetitive prayers are either rote and mechanical (and thus not “genuine”)or, in the case of meditative prayers, they smack of Eastern mysticism and are thus bad. All of which of course implies a profound disregard for much of Christian history and practice!
That is the article, thanks! That statement does seem to cross into Nestorian territory (and I remember being troubled by it at the time), but without the bishop here to defend himself I don’t want to run too far with an isolated comment.
The council of Ephesus has historically been viewed in orthodox (small o) circles as having gone much too far and having taken an extremist Alexandrine position that cheesed off almost everybody except the Alexandrian patriarch Dioscuros and his cronies (including the eastern emperor). Pope Leo the Great even called it a “robbers synod”, and it was seen as a sham from the start by many.
Part of what Chalcedon intended to do was to correct Ephesus and bring the moderate Antiochenes back into the fold. So while Ephesus remains an authoratative ecumenical council, it is generally read in the light of the Chalcedonian “definition” and Leo’s letter to the council.
Excellent point about the repititive prayer arguement Lee and Lynn! I grew up in a congregation that valued “spontaneous” worship, but when you raise you hands and sing the same four choruses every week, that can be just as much vain repitition as any rosary practice. Vanity comes when any spiritual practice is disengaged from the heart, mind and community.
Josh, thanks for laying it down, history-wise. I remember reading about those debates in Jenson’s The Triune God, but he seems to think that they got it right the first time and that Leo’s letter, which put the “spin” on Chalcedon, was too timid.
Of course, Jenson’s theology is pretty idiosyncratic in other ways too.
[...] see my post, Can Protestants Pray the Rosary?) No Comments so far Leave a comment RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI [...]