Hail Mary

Hail Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

That is recognizable to us all as the Roman Catholic Hail Mary prayer.

Here are some relevant supporting verses:

“Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!” (Luke 1:28)

 “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! (Luke 1:42)

 In Luke 1:28, the Greek word for favored is charitoō (χαριτόω), which means highly favored or—to grace (i.e., the verb.)  It is the same word used  here:

to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. (Eph. 1:6) 

It is not unbiblical to describe Mary as "full of grace." 

It is also indisputable (which still doesn’t cause some Protestant’s to cringe, for no good reason) to bestow upon Mary the honorific:  Mother of God.

P1: Jesus is God.
P2: Mary is his mother.
C: Mary is the Mother of God

 If that bugs you, get over it.

Furthermore it is of vital importance—not because of what it says about Mary, but about what it says about Jesus. He was fully human. He was God incarnate.

So everything in the Hail Mary is biblical, up to the “pray for us sinners” part.

Surely that is heterodoxy.

Well, maybe. Probably. But not definitely.

Praying to Mary (or anyone else) to deliver unto you only something God can deliver (e.g., salvation for you or another), or to give praise that is due only to God is blasphemous.

But consider two assumptions:

1)   That the dead, in glory, can hear you.

2)   That the dead, in glory, can pray

Are these ruled out by scripture? I don’t think so. So if Roman Catholics are merely  talking to Mary and asking her to pray—but are not worshipping Mary, is that truly the idolatry that we Protestants claim?

I can’t say that it is. I can’t say that it isn’t. It's...complicated.

It turns out that John Calvin had a nuanced view, and that his concern (in this regard) was not so much with contemporary Catholic doctrine, but with how it was potentially misunderstood and abused by the laity.  That is, he felt that while Catholic Mariology fell short of idolatry, it was so close that it was easy for the average Catholic to take the next step.

What is the official Catholic doctrine? Well, they make a distinction between two very similar Greek words. Latria, which is worship, and dulia, which is high esteem or service.

According to Rome, only God receives latria. The saints never are due latria, only dulia. This is, perhaps, hero worship, bit it is not (Rome says) idolatry.  They might argue, with some justification, that we not only afford Paul dulia but also Martin Luther and John Calvin and our favorite theologians, dead or alive.

So far—I cannot say that they don’t have a point and an argument.

But Mary is a slightly different story. Mary is given extra special dulia, hyper-dulia if you will.  Mary is not just a saint; she is the saints’ saint. Here Calvin argues that hyper-dulia is effectively indistinguishable from latria.

As evidence that Rome is still concerned with maintaining this distinction, one can look at Vatican II. There, by order of Pope John XXIII, the discussion of the Doctrine of Mary (which was considerable) was placed in category of Ecclesiology (the Doctrine of the Church) and not Theology (the Doctrine of God.)

For whatever that’s worth.

One thing is for sure. Mary is one of two New Testament heroes that we, in the Protestant church, don’t talk about enough. The other is Stephen. Interestingly Stephen is also the other person in the New Testament described (Acts 6:8) as “full of grace.”