To be honest, I am not aware of the precise history by which what we now call the “rosary” developed.  What we can say for sure is that it emerged out of a Catholic Church which had already firmly committed to the semi-deification of the Virgin Mary.  The cult of Mary has been deeply imbedded in the Roman Catholic church at least since the time of Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century, and even before that.

The rosary is a set rotation of prayers including the Apostle’s Creed, “Our Fathers” and “Hail Mary’s.”  Catholics use this as a physical means to engage in focused prayer.  That, by itself, is a good idea.  Having means and objects which help us to focus on prayer is not a problem.  Non-Catholics might even be helped by using something to help us to focus in prayer.

However, I am convinced that, if she were here, and if we were able to ask Mary whether she would like to be addressed through “Hail Marys”, I am sure she would be mortified and would beg us not to pray to God through her!!!  The cult of Mary is a distraction from our worship of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, at best, and is an ungodly kind of idolatry at worst.  To be fair, just so you know, the Catholic Church officially denies that the adoration of Mary is a kind of idolatry.  They claim to pray through, but not to Mary, but Catholics may struggle to see the difference.

Is this a salvation issue?  I suppose not, but I would definitely not encourage any Christian believer to take part in a rosary!  This is a Roman Catholic innovation, with no biblical support whatsoever which is either not helpful or perhaps is even harmful to Christian practice.

My suggestion:  Non-Catholics do not do this practice at all, as far as I know.  Therefore we are not tempted to do the rosary!  I conclude that this is not an issue for non-Catholic Christians.   For our Catholic friends, personally, I would not go after them on this issue.  There are more important theological or doctrinal problems with Catholicism than the use of rosaries.  I would help my Catholic friends to be introduced to the Bible and to the biblical Jesus, and let them come to their own conclusions on the rosary.  As people begin to commit to biblical kinds of Christianity, they will most likely abandon doing the rosary all on their own without us telling them that this is something bad to do.

John Oakes