Audio only:
Joe replies to “THE ROSARY || The SHOCKING TRUTH that most people don’t know…” by DLM Christian Lifestyle. He unpacks how a misreading a Scripture can lead to misunderstandings about the rosary.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe, Heschmeyer, and today I want to explore the rosary because the rosary is perhaps the most practiced Catholic devotion outside of mass and the sacraments, and it’s been suggested as part of your regular prayer life by many of the Great Saints people like Padre Pio, Louis de Montfort, Therese of Lisieux, as well as countless popes. So it goes almost without saying that Catholics hold the rosary in high esteem and many non-Catholics in their hand find the rosary strange, maybe unbiblical, even pagan. So today I want to look at some objections to the rosary raised by Daniel Martiz, a non-denominational Christian who has a YouTube channel called DLM Christian Lifestyle, and he’s got a very popular video against the rosary. He’s got more than 300,000 views at the time of this recording, so it really seems to resonate with people and he makes several arguments against the rosary, chiefly that it’s unbiblical because number one, it’s not found in scripture.
Number two, it’s too repetitive. Number three, it’s too focused on Mary, and number four is to physical. So I want to address each of those objections in turn, but first, if it’s not too repetitive, I want to thank all of my supporters over on shameless joe.com. Particularly today. I want to thank Andy and Anna supporters and friends who recommended that I do a video on the Rosary. So for as little as $5 a month, you too can need access to ad-free episodes exclusive q and a live streams. And lately we’ve been trying to include notes and other resources used in each episode. Now your direct support is what keeps this channel going and keeps the production quality as high as it is. So I just want to say thank you to everyone who’s currently supporting, and if you’re not yet and would like to, you could do that over@shamelessjoe.com. And with that, let’s get into Daniel’s first objection. Namely, the word rosary is never mentioned in the Bible, and since scripture doesn’t tell us that we have to pray the rosary, it’s therefore wrong to pray it.
CLIP:
Now, I need you to listen very carefully because this is very important. Nowhere in scripture does it say you have to pray with the rosary, so it’s unbiblical.
Joe:
Ironically, Daniel wrote a nearly six minute long prayer of his own that he says we should start our day with. We don’t find his prayer in the Bible. So is it wrong to write your own original prayers or not? And if it’s not wrong, well, is it wrong to pray a prayer that somebody else wrote or is it okay when Daniel does it and bad when Catholics do it? Well, even more ironically, the prayers that Daniel’s complaining about are actually drawn from scripture, but we’re going to get to that shortly at the heart of his confusion is this idea that he and many other people have that unless the Bible says you must do X, then it’s unbiblical and you’re not allowed to do X. Okay, so let’s just grant that premise for a moment and think about where it goes. How far does that rule extend?
Nowhere in the Bible says we have to pray to Jesus or to the Holy Spirit. Does that mean it’s wrong to cry to Jesus for that matter? Nowhere in the Bible tells me which books we have to believe are in the Bible, and just as we don’t find the word rosary in the Bible, we also don’t find the word Bible in the Bible. So does that mean it’s unbiblical to have a Bible? In fact, what about this itself nor in the Bible says we have to do only those things taught in the Bible. That’s a manmade Protestant tradition. It’s not something that Jesus or the apostles ever taught. So the rule is really self-refuting since it actually outlaws itself. So the problem with the rosary can’t just be that Jesus didn’t give it to us. A better objection is that the rosary is too repetitive.
CLIP:
Wow. It is like we learn nothing from what Jesus even told the Pharisees back in the day telling them to stop repeating their prayers because that is exactly what the rosary was made for, and that’s exactly what people are doing today.
Joe:
Now, Daniel doesn’t explicitly cite any biblical support for his claim here, but I suspect that he’s got in mind Matthew chapter six, verse seven, in which Jesus says not to heap up empty phrases or in the King James version, not to use vain repetitions, but Jesus is clearly not saying that we’re not allowed to use form prayers. The Psalms are formed prayers, and he’s not saying that we’re not allowed to pray the same prayer repeatedly after all. In the very next breath, he gives us a form prayer. He gives us the our Father, and we know that even as far back as the first century Christians were in the habit of praying this prayer three times a day. Jesus himself in the garden of Gethsemane, prays the same prayer three times in a row as Matthew 26 tells us, Jesus went away and prayed for the third time saying the same words.
St. Paul likewise describes going to God with the same prayer request repeatedly. So what does Jesus actually prohibit in Matthew chapter six? Well, the Greek word there refers to someone stammering or rambling or a mindless sort of repetition. In other words, when you’re praying, don’t just do it mindlessly and Catholics agree as Pope St. John Paul II explained, the recitation of the rosary calls for a quiet rhythm and a lingering pace helping the individual to meditate on the mystery of the Lord’s life as seen through the eyes of Mary. In contrast, if we’re just mindlessly saying the words, that kind of mechanical repetition of formulas is the very thing that Jesus warns against, but this is true of any prayer, even the prayer that Jesus himself gives us in Matthew six. So repetitive prayer and form prayer are good and perfectly biblical, but only have done in a way that is contemplative and not just mindlessly mechanical. Now, a third objection that Daniel raises and one which I know that many people have is that the rosary is focused too much on Mary. Now, there’s two versions of this argument. One is that we’re not allowed to ask for Mary’s intercession at all.
CLIP:
In fact, nowhere does it say that you should pray to Mary because Mary is dead.
Joe:
When the Sadducees made a similar argument against those saints who had died, Jesus responded by reminding them that God is the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, and that he is not the God of the dead, but of the living even tells them you are quite wrong and suggests that this is because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. And I think that is a sufficient response here. If you think that the saints are simply dead in the grave, if you don’t realize that they’re alive right now in the presence of the living God in heaven, then you don’t understand scripture or the power of God.
CLIP:
There is no other mediator, only Jesus Christ. He’s the only mediator between humans and God, one Timothy two verse five, for there is one God and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
Joe:
Just once, I wish that Protestants misquoting that verse would finish the sentence because as you might guess, it doesn’t end with the comma as it appears in Daniel’s presentation. If you read what St. Paul actually wrote, you’ll see how badly that passage is being taken out of context. Not only is Paul not denouncing going to other people for intercession, he literally begins the chapter by urging that supplications prayers, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all men. He then refers to Jesus as the one mediator who gave himself as a ransom for all that testimony to which was born at the proper time. So notice in calling Jesus our one mediator, he’s not saying that Jesus is our one intercessor that would contradict what he’s just said about our need to intercede for one another. Rather by calling him the one mediator. He means that he’s the one who died on the cross for all of us as the ransom for the sins of all mankind. It’s not an argument against going to somebody else for intercession at all. A stronger objection yet is that while it is fine to go to other Christians, including the saints to pray for us, the rosary goes to Mary just too many times
CLIP:
Today the basic rosary only has 59 beats. Listen to this, 53 of them are for Hail Mary’s, the other six for our father’s prayer,
Joe:
And he’s actually leaving a couple of prayers off there. I mean, on each of the five decades of the rosary, there’s a Lord’s prayer, an our Father, 10 Hail Marys. Then a glory be which is directed to each of the persons of the Trinity. And then many people add a prayer at the end. Someone’s called the oh my Jesus prayer or the Fatima Prayer, which is as you might imagine directed to Jesus. So it’s not really a 53 to six kind of split, but nevertheless, I take the broader point. It is true that the most common prayer in the rosary is the Hail Mary. So I completely understand the concern of people who think that’s too much focus on Mary. Now, I think that’s a needless anxiety. You don’t actually have to measure how many times you talk to your fellow Christians and ask them to pray for you compared to how many times you talk directly to God.
That’s not a principle found anywhere in the Bible. In fact, we want to watch out for any anxiety that pits one good thing like intercession against another good thing like going directly to God. Remember in John 12, when M anoints Jesus’ feet with oil, it’s Judas who objects that the money could have been used for the poor. And Jesus shows us in his response that this kind of anxiety isn’t from God. Oftentimes when you do something good, you’ll find people complaining that you didn’t do some other good thing. If you spend a lot of money on a church, people will complain about how that money could have gone to the poor. But if you spend a lot of money on a casino or at a casino, they don’t even think twice about it. That’s how you know this kind of anxiety isn’t really coming from God.
And the same is true about anxiety, but how you’re spending your time. Now, look, if you are not praying to God enough, fix that. Go to him more. But do that by cutting out the distractions from God in your life, the worldly pleasures, the self indulgences, that sort of thing. Don’t do it by pitting prayer to God against asking your brothers and sisters in Christ for their intercession. But okay, look, many Protestants believe it’s not just about balance. Even one hail Mary is too many because it’s idolatrous to that. I would ask if you’re worried about the Hail Mary, which part is it that strikes you as idolatrous? Let’s take it piece by piece. The first part goes Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Now, that’s basically verbatim the angel Gabriel’s greeting to Mary in Luke 1 28. The second part goes, blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.
Jesus. Here again, basically verbatim of Elizabeth’s greeting in Luke 1 42. Now granted we’ve added the names Mary and Jesus to signal who we’re talking about, but surely that’s not idolatry, right? So that leaves us with the third part, holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Now, hopefully you think Mary is a Christian, and hopefully you don’t think asking another Christian to pray to God for you is idolatry. So where is the problem with the hail Mary? Exactly. Well, according to Daniel, the problem is insane. Holy Mary, that we shouldn’t call Mary holy at all.
CLIP:
Nowhere in scripture does it say that Mary is holy. It’s unbiblical.
Joe:
But Daniel is quite mistaken Here, the Greek word for holiness, hagios is used to refer to the holiness of God, certainly, but the exact same word is also used to describe anyone or anything set aside for God. So the exact same word is used to describe the holy of Holies, the holy women in prophets of the Old Testament and all the saints. The word that gets translated as saints and English is literally just the plural of the word holy. It’s the holies. The saints are the holies. So it’s perfectly biblical to describe Mary as Holy Mary, or in fact to refer to the Holy saints in heaven. Other Protestants are going to object to a different part. They’re going to say, the problem isn’t that you said Holy Mary, it’s that you said mother of God, but you really can’t deny that without denying either A, that Mary is the mother of Jesus, or B, that Jesus is God. And scripture refers to Mary is Jesus’ mother and to Jesus’ God. So here again, we should listen to Elizabeth who greets Mary as the mother of my Lord and Luke one, this is all perfectly biblical. Finally, Daniel argues that the rosary is wrong because it uses beads and we’re not allowed to use material things in worship. Now, bear in mind that as Daniel himself points out the rosary, beads aren’t like an object of our worship. They’re literally just keeping track of where we are in our prayers.
CLIP:
The beads are used by Catholics to help the practitioner to keep track of around 180 prayers.
Joe:
So rosary beads are no more idolatrous than an abacus or a bookmark. You don’t even need them to pray the rosary. You can use your fingers, but Daniel claims that this is still evil because it’s using material things.
CLIP:
It’s strange that people always want to add manmade traditions to their religion, to the Bible, never add something to the Bible. Don’t add holy water crosses and all of these things and thinking that it will have more power. No, listen carefully. Scripture says that we can only worship God in spirit and in truth, no material things.
Joe:
When Jesus talks about worshiping in spirit and in truth, he’s not disparaging the use of material things at all. In fact, Jesus in scripture works through physical things quite regularly, water into wine, clay, the touch of his hands, bread and wine into his body and blood, and ultimately his life, giving death on the wood of the cross as he bodily dies for us and pours out his blood on the wood of the cross. That’s Christianity. Now, Daniel and many other Protestants bring up this objection to material things and worship ultimately due to what I call the gnostic strain in Protestantism. It’s rooted in this idea that spiritual things are good while physical things are evil, or at least unspiritual in a way that gets in the way. Now to some that might make even intuitive sense, we talk about sins of the flesh and earthly pleasures, but this is rooted in this much deeper problem, and it’s one that I addressed last week. One of the arguments against relics is based on the same worldview. So where does this rejection of physical objects and worship come from and how can we answer it using the Bible? Well, you’re going to have to click here to find out. For Shameless Popery, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.