WelCom, September 2024
Rebecca Taylor-Hunt, Director, Catholic Enquiry Centre
The number of people contacting us at the Catholic Enquiry Centre with questions about the Catholic faith is increasing. These are often former protestant Christians who find themselves drawn to Catholicism for a variety of reasons, yet they struggle with aspects of Catholic belief. The most frequent questions centre around Mary, Mother of God, and our special relationship with her.
There is so much misinformation about how we as Catholics view Mary – for example, particularly on TikTok – which leave newcomers genuinely confused: do Catholics worship Mary, or not? The answer, of course, is not. And yet, as I told my teenage daughter when she brought home her first boyfriend, ‘if someone comes into our house and disrespects your mother, he’s disrespecting you’. She didn’t see that boy for very long, thankfully.
When we pray to Mary, we are not worshipping her, rather we are asking for her intercession on our behalf. We believe she is so close to God in Heaven that when she prays for us, our prayers are amplified by hers. We venerate or honour Mary, but that isn’t the same as worshiping her. We worship God alone. Yet Mary’s ‘yes’ to God is incredibly important to our faith; we owe so much to this brave young woman who journeyed with her son throughout His life, and suffered at His Passion in a way that is painful to imagine.
One newcomer recently said the words in some of the prayers to Mary seem so close to worship, that it makes him uncomfortable. The easy answer is these are not the prayers for him. He also wanted to know, in percentages, how often I pray to Mary compared with Jesus. I told him there was no comparison, that Jesus is at the centre of my prayers, which seemed to reassure him. We meet Mary when the time is right, and for some that is sooner, and others later. The newcomer admitted he had tried praying the Rosary and had found it an incredibly powerful experience.
He is fortunate he connected with this prayer so quickly, and Mary may have had something to do with that. I wonder if his struggle with Mary is because she is making herself known to him in ways that are hard for him understand. He may think she is knocking on the door, but it looks to me like she has already made herself at home.
Feast of the Nativity of Mary, 8 September
This feast day commemorates the birth day of Mary. There are only three birthdays on the
liturgical calendar: Mary, Jesus, and John the Baptist.