Am I a "bad" Catholic if...?

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WillC

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Now, growing up I was always told (in simple terms) that Catholics ask for the intercession of Saints and Mary. That we ask them to intercede on our behalf as we are all one Church, the Communion of Saints. But their main goal was to point to Jesus. I have no issue with this at all.

Is it wrong if, when I go to pray the Rosary, (specifically the Hail Mary’s) that I feel as if the Blessed Mother is telling me, “Go to God. He will not forsake your prayer. Take this time of prayer to open your heart to the Lord.”

Idk… I’ve wrestled with this because I know that the greatest of Catholics call upon the Saints and the Blessed Mother on a daily basis. Am I a bad Catholic for feeling this way?
 
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WillC said:
Is it wrong if, when I go to pray the Rosary, that I feel as if the Blessed Mother is telling me, “Go to God. He will not forsake your prayer. Take this time of prayer to open your heart to the Lord.”
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Go to the Master, it is He in whom salvation is found. No, you are not wrong. My own Grandmother was so caught up in praying to St. Tekakwitha, it seemed to me that she had placed Jesus on a lower peg.
 
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WillC said:
Idk… I’ve wrestled with this because I know that the greatest of Catholics call upon the Saints and the Blessed Mother on a daily basis. Am I a bad Catholic for feeling this way?
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No, it’s fine if you feel called to do something other than the rosary. Many holy people have prayed the rosary, but it’s certainly not required or the only route to holiness.
 
WillC said:
Am I a bad Catholic for feeling this way?
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I feel the same way. I never felt a connection to Mary no matter how hard I try. As for the saints, I’m ashamed to admit that I only pray to St Anthony whenever I lose something.

But it’s not a requirement to pray to Mary or the saints.
 
Hello @WillC!

No, William! It’s not bad. In our Christian Living classes, my teacher taught us that we don’t pray to the saints. Catholics pray to God with the help of the saints’ intercession. There’s nothing bad to pray to God directly.
 
Mary is ALWAYS telling us to open our hearts to the Lord.

It doesn’t mean you have to put Mary in the corner to do that.

What exactly did you see the Rosary as being, other than “opening your heart to the Lord”?

I spent last night watching the new documentary about Fr Peyton, the Rosary Priest, whose main mission was to get people to pray the rosary in their families, and he would tell whole arenas of people that when you pray the Rosary you may be saying the words “Hail Mary full of Grace” but your soul is really shouting, “My God! I Love You!”

If you want to pray to God directly you can do that any time in a variety of ways, and it is okay if you choose a prayer form other than Rosary. But if you’re somehow contending that a Rosary is not “praying to God directly” then you’re a bit confused about what a Rosary is. It is a prayer to God and a meditation on the Life of Christ. It is NOT just some intercessional prayer. It is NOT a “prayer to a saint”.
 
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Id also point out that it’s fine for your spiritual practice to change. Maybe you feel like doing something other than the Rosary right now. Cool. Maybe at some point you’ll feel moved to pick up the Rosary again and make it a regular part of your prayer life. Also cool.

You don’t have to make some kind of permanent choice.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
But if you’re somehow contending that a Rosary is not “praying to God directly” then you’re a bit confused about what a Rosary is. It is a prayer to God and a meditation on the Life of Christ. It is NOT just some intercessional prayer. It is NOT a “prayer to a saint”.
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Its not? I was always instructed that it was showing due honor to Mary, and we are asking her to pray for us. To intercede for us. I don’t have any issue praying the rest. Just Ave Maria.

And even then I don’t have a problem with it at all. I just hear a voice saying to “Open my heart to God” while I try and complete all the Hail Mary’s.

But Hail Mary is not directly a prayer to God, is it?
 
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Again:

The Rosary is a Prayer to GOD, in addition to honoring Mary.

We meditate on the mysteries in the life of JESUS.

Our Mother Mary wants us to pray the Rosary in order to lead us closer to JESUS.

Having said that, if you want to pray a different way, do so. It might be best because I don’t think you really get or appreciate what the Rosary is. You can always come back to it later if you decide to give it another try.
 
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I understand what it is, so far as I’ve been instructed. Everything you said, I agree with.

I know we meditate upon the mysteries, but I don’t feel anything from the Hail Mary’s. Its like a blocked call, while everything else flows fine.

I “get it” fine (as I said, so far as I’ve been instructed). Thats why I made the post in the first place. Because my knowledge and conscience are in a different place.
 
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It is also, let’s face it, a prayer TO Mary.

Just because in the last 50 years or so Protestants have chosen to narrow the meaning of the word “prayer’ and make it mean ONLY “given to God alone’ does not mean Catholics have to do the same.

Prayer is communication.

What we can say with perfect truth is that all prayer, all communication, has an ultimate end in God. Therefore when we pray with others or to others (like Mary) in a request to intercede or join in prayer to God, the ultimate end is always God.

But I wish that Catholics would stop denying their heritage in order to, I don’t know, ‘seem’ ecumenical or whatever.

It is not we who need to change our definition to align with a narrow and incomplete definition of prayer; it is others who need to expand and complete their definition of prayer to the correct one.

Otherwise Protestants will continue to ‘correct’ and misjudge Catholics and Catholics will keep on fracturing themselves with some rushing to agree with Protestants and saying that Catholics were wrong ‘back in the old days’ or whatever.
 
St Therese of Lisieux wrote that the praying of the Rosary with her sisters in her Carmelite convent was very difficult for her. She suffered with the community requirement to pray it in community.
 
What do “knowledge and conscience” have to do with it?
I hope you’re not suggesting that people who pray rosary lack knowledge of how to talk directly to God, or that their conscience should bother them because they’re not talking directly to God,
Because they ARE talking directly to God.

If you simply don’t like saying the prayer, say a different type of prayer.

But don’t make it into some big knowledge-and-conscience issue because you personally don’t feel like saying Marian prayers right now. It doesn’t make you any more holy or knowledgeable or conscientious.

Choose a different prayer or Scripture reading . . . .
 
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BarbTh said:
St Therese of Lisieux wrote that the praying of the Rosary with her sisters in her Carmelite convent was very difficult for her. She suffered with the community requirement to pray it in community.
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Where can I read about this? Maybe it can help me?
 
It is both a prayer to Mary in the intercession parts of the Hail Marys, and a prayer to God overall and in all the prayers such as the Creed, Glory Be, and Our Father that have nothing to do with Mary. It is also quite possible to meditate on many, I would say most, of the mysteries without thinking specifically of Mary as she wasn’t there for the particular event.

I’m not denying my Catholic heritage by saying that.

I just don’t get why people who want to pray in a way other than Rosary don’t just go pray how they want, when we have hundreds of prayers and prayer forms. No one is making people pray the Rosary. In the era I grew up, I was the odd one out for praying it!
 
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I feel a lot of pressure to pray the Rosary, almost as much as to go to Mass. Maybe things were different back in the day!
 
There is no one way to pray the Rosary, because there is no “official way.”

Lots of Catholics will TELL YOU that their way is the correct or official or proper way, but that is simply untrue.

Initially the Rosary didn’t have Hail Marys at all; it was simply the repetition of the Lord’s Prayer 150 times, in honor of the Psalter. Later on, some substituted Hail Marys instead of Our Fathers, again, in place of the Psalms.
Some time later the notion of the Rosary how we think of it came about: (3) sets of Mysteries, led by an Our Father, with Hail Marys for each decade. Still later our late great Pope St. John Paul II created the Luminous Mysteries, and suggested their addition to the Rosary, particularly on Thursdays.
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The Hail Mary is both a prayer of praise of Mary, “Hail Mary, full of grace!” and an intercessory prayer “pray for us sinners.” There’s nothing wrong with either component of the prayer, as the praise comes right from Luke’s Gospel via Gabriel, and, asking the greatest Christian in the history of the world to pray for all of us sinners is the most logical person to ask for help.

I would suggest this to you: imagine the Mystery being contemplated in your mind, see the scene being acted out, as you softly whisper the Hail Marys; the key is the MEDITATION on the MYSTERY. Think of the ten Hail Marys being there to give your mouth and fingers something to mark time with as you behold the Mystery, most of which are about Jesus, but a couple of them are, in fact, about Mary herself.

There is no requirement to be close to Mary, to pray the Rosary, or to have specific devotions to her. But most saints did have those things, learn from their wisdom.

For she is higher in honor than the Cherubim, and incomparably more glorious than the Seraphim,
Deacon Christopher
 
They sure were. In the 70s we had an older pastor who would encourage the family Rosary from time to time. My parents were also about 10-15 years older than most of my friends’ parents, and my parents prayed the Rosary and other pre-V2 devotions.

But the big forms of prayer at my parish in the 70s weren’t Rosaries or devotions. Elderly ladies would say Rosary daily and once we had the pilgrim Fatima statue visit, that was about it. Everyone else was doing Bible study or charismatic prayer. That’s what was trendy then.

The resurgence in the Rosary is largely due to traditionalist influence, and possibly some influence from Latino and Filipino culture. For me that’s not a bad thing, because I generally like rosary. But if one feels pressure to pray Rosary (or anything else) and doesn’t want to, then they should be able to choose something else. I don’t feel guilty that I don’t want to participate in the women’s Bible study at my parish. It’s not that I think Bible reading is bad prayer, I just know I’ll be bored and uncomfortable and if I want to read the Bible I’ll be happier doing it on my own at home.
 
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