Topical Bible Studies

Can you honor Mary so much that you actually dishonor Jesus?

Catholics insist they do not worship Mary. They venerate her. To be fair, there is a difference between honor and worship. But then I started reading their prayers…

“Our life, our sweetness and our hope.”
“In thee I put all my trust, all my hope of salvation.”
“I thank thee for having saved me from hell.”

Those prayers are addressed to Mary.

This study isn’t about whether Mary deserves honor. She does. The question is: At what point does honor cross the line?

So far in this series, we have seen how the Bible never gives Mary the title “Mother of God,” never says she was sinless, and never calls her a perpetual virgin. Yet some Catholics respond with, “Jesus wouldn’t like you disrespecting His mom.” I agree. Jesus would not want anyone disrespecting His mother, and I don’t want to either.

But let me ask you a question: Can you disrespect someone by saying too much about them?

Suppose I’m invited to preach somewhere, and the brother introducing me says, “Lance has written several helpful Bible study books.” That would be kind, and I’d appreciate it. Now suppose he says, “Lance was truly inspired by God, and I believe his latest book belongs in the biblical canon.” I would want to crawl under the pew. 

When you give people more honor than is true, you aren’t respecting them. You’re replacing them with someone who doesn’t exist. What does proper respect for Mary look like? I’m convinced the most respectful thing we can do is take her at her word. Let’s find out what that means.

Mary indeed deserves honor. The Bible says we should render honor to whom it is due (see Romans 13:7). When Mary praised God for choosing her to carry His Son, she said this in Luke 1:48:

For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; for behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.

Call her blessed. Call her the Lord’s maidservant. That’s biblical. But what about when someone takes it further? When Christians raise concerns about how Mary is treated in Catholicism, the most common reply is, “We don’t worship Mary. We venerate her.”

Let’s be fair. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “The Church’s devotion to the Blessed Virgin is intrinsic to Christian worship,” and the same paragraph insists that this devotion is essentially different from the adoration given to God.¹ Catholic theology distinguishes latria, the adoration owed to God alone, from dulia, the honor given to (their version of) saints, and hyperdulia, the highest form of veneration reserved strictly for Mary. 

And I’ll be fair about something else. The English word “worship” doesn’t always mean what we mean in theological discussions. I remember being in a restaurant in Wellington, New Zealand, once, and there was a plaque dedicating the building to “Her Worship the City Mayor.” The word comes from “worth-ship,” and in other times and cultures it could simply mean honor.² Notice Luke 14:10 from the King James Version:

But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee.

Jesus told this parable in a Pharisee’s home after He noticed how the guests chose where to sit. He encouraged humility. Nobody thinks Jesus was promising the humble man that he’d be adored as God. He meant honored. So when an old Catholic prayer book uses the word “worship,” I’m not going to pounce on that one word as if it settles everything. That wouldn’t be fair.

Instead, let’s look at what the prayers actually say. Here’s a prayer written by a man the Catholic Church honors as a saint and a Doctor of the Church. It was printed in an approved Catholic prayer book, and Pope Pius IX granted an indulgence to anyone who prays this prayer before an image of Mary.³

Most holy and immaculate Virgin! O my Mother! thou who art the Mother of my Lord, the Queen of the world, the advocate, hope, and refuge of sinners!

The “Mother of my Lord” is Elizabeth’s phrase, straight out of Luke 1. But “the Queen of the world”? The advocate? The hope and refuge of sinners? Now we’ve strayed from Scripture. Watch what happens a few lines later.

I worship thee, great Queen, and give thee thanks for the many favors thou hast bestowed on me in the past; most of all do I thank thee for having saved me from hell, which I had so often deserved.

A newer version of the prayer reads, “I place in you all my hopes for salvation.”⁴

Even if we swap out the word “worship” with “honor,” that doesn’t fix the problem. Thanking Mary for saving you from hell and placing all your hope of salvation in her isn’t a simple disagreement in semantics. It’s a question of where you’ve put your trust. In Acts 4:12, Peter says:

Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

In case you don’t know the context, Peter was talking about Jesus when he said this. Not Mary. 

Let’s consider another prayer: “The Hail, Holy Queen,” traditionally prayed at the close of the Rosary. In that prayer, the person praying calls Mary “our life, our sweetness and our hope,” and it calls her our “most gracious advocate.”⁵ Life? Hope? Advocate? Scripture gives those titles to Jesus.

When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.

Colossians 3:4

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, by the commandment of God our Savior and the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope.

1 Timothy 1:1

My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

1 John 2:1

Here’s another prayer, published by Catholic Online under the title “Consecration to Mary”:

My Queen and my Mother, I give myself entirely to you; and to show my devotion to you, I consecrate to you this day my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my heart, my whole being without reserve. Wherefore, good Mother, as I am your own, keep me, guard me, as your property and possession. Amen.⁶

Wow.

Compare that with what Paul says about who owns you.

Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

1 Corinthians 6:19–20

You are not your own. You were bought at a price, and Mary didn’t pay it. She was bought with the very same price.

In the first century, Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). Yet in 1891 Pope Leo XIII went so far as to take language that deliberately echoes John 14:6 and write an encyclical—a papal letter sent to all Catholic bishops—on the Rosary, saying, “so no man goeth to Christ but by His Mother.”⁷

For nearly two millennia, Jesus as our High Priest was satisfied with being the sole mediator between God and man. Then, the Catholic Church codified an additional mediator—or mediatrix. The Catechism lists the titles for Mary the Church invokes: Advocate, Helper, Benefactress, and Mediatrix.⁸

Again, to be fair, the very next paragraph says that Mary’s role in no way obscures or diminishes the unique mediation of Christ, that her influence rests entirely on His, and that no creature can ever be counted alongside the incarnate Word.⁹ Catholic apologists add that all of us mediate in a small way every time we pray for one another.¹⁰ Yet we cannot ignore the fact that Mary is presented as the Mediatrix. Yet the Bible says in 1 Timothy 2:5–6:

For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.

One Mediator. Paul doesn’t say Jesus mediates because He is the most sympathetic, or that He is one of many ways to God, or He is the best connected, or the easiest to approach. He says it because Christ gave Himself a ransom. In this passage, mediation is tied to the price that Christ—not you, not me, and not Mary—paid.

Some will answer that the word translated one means first or primary, rather than exclusive, which would leave room for lesser mediators underneath Christ. But read the sentence again. There is one God and one Mediator. Nobody reads the first half of that verse as saying that the God of the Bible is the primary or first God.

Along those lines, some Catholics defend the title Mediatrix by saying that Christ alone possesses mediation in the unique and saving sense, while Mary and other Christians can participate in that mediation subordinately through intercession.¹¹ Yes, Christians pray for one another. Paul asks for exactly that four verses earlier (1 Timothy 2:1). But praying for your neighbor is not an office, and it never became a title. We all can and should pray for and help one another, but the titles Mediator, Advocate, and Helper are already taken. We cannot give them to someone else. 

Interestingly, even the Vatican has recently acknowledged the danger in the title Mediatrix for Mary. In 2025, they warned that special prudence is needed with the title and that “Mediatrix of All Graces” can give people a distorted understanding of Mary’s role. It even appealed to the very texts we’re reading—Acts 4:12 and 1 Timothy 2:5–6.¹²

Quoting earlier writers, Pope Pius X described Mary as the neck that joins the head to the body. He also called her the channel through which everything flows.¹³ Again, that’s not a biblical truth. In 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 1, the church is called the body, Jesus is called the head, and every disciple is a member of that body. No one is mentioned as being the neck, “the channel through which everything flows.” 

After giving Mary such veneration and worship, Catholics claim that doing so “neither takes away anything from nor adds anything to the dignity and efficacy of Christ.”¹⁴ But that claim has to be measured against the language actually being used. When someone says to Mary, “In thee I put all my trust, all my hope of salvation,” or refers to her as “the advocate, hope, and refuge of sinners,” the question is whether, in practice, the line between subordinate veneration and the trust that properly belongs to Christ remains sufficiently clear.

And then the same person who says that worshiping (or venerating) Mary does not take away from the honor due to Jesus begins kneeling before statues of Mary, lighting candles before her image, and carrying her crowned statue through streets and cathedrals. A Catholic friend might say, “That’s no different from kissing a photo of someone you love.” I have photos of my wife. I’ve never lit a candle in front of one and asked my wife to save me from hell.

But suppose we grant everything. Suppose bowing before Mary really is honor in that older sense of the word, and nothing more. The Bible shows us what God’s faithful servants do when someone offers them that kind of honor.

As Peter was coming in, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter lifted him up, saying, “Stand up; I myself am also a man.”

Acts 10:25–26

Cornelius wasn’t confused. He was a devout, God-fearing man, and he knew Peter wasn’t God. The Greek word translated “worshiped” here often describes bowing before a person as a gesture of respect.¹⁵ In other words, Cornelius offered Peter what veneration claims to be. Peter stopped him anyway.

Now I, John, saw and heard these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who showed me these things. Then he said to me, “See that you do not do that. For I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren the prophets, and of those who keep the words of this book. Worship God.”

Revelation 22:8–9

John was an apostle. He knew an angel wasn’t God, but the angel stopped him anyway. The angel didn’t say, “Don’t worry, that’s only dulia.” He said, “Don’t do that! Worship God!”

That’s what faithful servants of God do when people try to exalt them. They refuse it. Remember what Mary called herself? The Lord’s maidservant. If she were on earth and saw the statues and heard the prayers, do you think she would fully approve? As a servant of the Lord, I believe she would say, “Don’t do that! Stand up! I’m a servant too. Worship God!”

So, how do you properly respect Mary? Take her at her word. Call her blessed, because she said generations would. Imitate her faith, because she trusted God when it cost her everything. And listen to the last words Scripture records from her lips.

His mother said to the servants, “Whatever He says to you, do it.”

John 2:5

Scripture never records a Christian praying to Mary, invoking her as Mediatrix, consecrating himself to her, or placing his hope of salvation in her. Mary never pointed people to herself. She pointed them to her Son. So what has He said? He said to believe in Him (John 8:24). He said to repent (Luke 13:3). And He said that whoever believes and is baptized will be saved (Mark 16:16). If you want to honor Mary, do what she told you to do, which is to do whatever Jesus tells you to do.

If you’re Catholic and you’ve stayed with me this long, thank you. None of these studies have been to humiliate or one-up you or your church’s doctrine. I’ve said it because giving anyone more than Scripture gives them isn’t honor, and because the trust and the hope of salvation that these prayers hand to Mary belong to her Son only.

My prayer is that you’ll honor Mary the way Scripture honors her, you’ll respect her enough to do as she asks, and that you’ll give God the worship that belongs to Him alone.

1. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), §971. ↩︎
2. Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “worship, n.” The older sense survives in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, where the groom tells his bride, “with my body I thee worship” (“The Form of Solemnization of Matrimony”). ↩︎
3. Alphonsus Liguori, “Prayer of St. Alphonsus de Liguori to the Blessed Virgin Mary,” in Francis X. Lasance, The Catholic Girl’s Guide: Counsels and Devotions for Girls in the Ordinary Walks of Life, and in Particular for the Children of Mary (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1906), 580. The volume bears the nihil obstat of Remigius Lafort and the imprimatur of John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York, dated December 18, 1905. The prayer states, “I worship thee, great Queen … most of all do I thank thee for having saved me from hell,” and “In thee I put all my trust, all my hope of salvation.” The page also records an indulgence granted by Pius IX on September 7, 1854, for reciting the prayer before an image or picture of the Blessed Virgin. See also Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary, 2nd American ed. (New York: Edward Dunigan & Brother, 1852), 332–33. ↩︎
4. “Overcome Temptation with Our Lady’s Help: A Powerful Prayer by St. Alphonsus Liguori,” ChurchPop, https://churchpop.com/overcome-temptation-with-our-ladys-help-a-powerful-prayer-by-st-alphonsus-liguori/. For a version that renders the line as “homages,” see “The Prayer You Should Say When You Make a Visit to the Blessed Virgin,” Catholic-Link, https://catholic-link.org/quotes/the-prayer-you-should-say-when-you-make-a-visit-to-the-blessed-virgin/. Some modern versions soften the prayer further; see “Prayer to Mary, Refuge of Sinners,” Catholic News Agency, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/resource/55337. ↩︎
5. Salve Regina (“Hail, Holy Queen”), a Marian antiphon dating to the eleventh century and traditionally prayed at the conclusion of the Rosary. ↩︎
6. “Consecration to Mary,” Catholic Online, https://www.catholic.org/prayers/prayer.php?p=3042. ↩︎
7. Leo XIII, Octobri Mense (September 22, 1891), §4, https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_22091891_octobri-mense.html. ↩︎
8. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), §969, quoting Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium (November 21, 1964), §62. ↩︎
9. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), §970, quoting Lumen Gentium §§60, 62. ↩︎
10. “Isn’t Calling Mary the Mediatrix of All Graces Contrary to the Doctrine That Jesus Is the Sole Mediator?” Catholic Answers, https://catholic.com/qa/isnt-calling-mary-the-mediatrix-of-all-graces-contrary-to-the-doctrine-that-jesus-is-the-sole. ↩︎
11. “Isn’t Calling Mary the Mediatrix of All Graces Contrary to the Doctrine That Jesus Is the Sole Mediator?” Catholic Answers. ↩︎
12. Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Mater Populi Fidelis: Doctrinal Note on Some Marian Titles Regarding Mary’s Cooperation in the Work of Salvation (November 4, 2025), §§ 22, in the sections headed “Mediatrix” and “Mother of Grace.” ↩︎
13. “Mediatrix of All Graces,” EWTN, https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/teachings/mediatrix-of-all-graces-143, citing Pius X, Ad Diem Illum (1904). ↩︎
14. Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium: Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (November 21, 1964), §62, https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html; quoted in Catechism of the Catholic Church §969, and applied to 1 Tim 2:5–6 in John Paul II, “Mary’s Mediation Derives from Christ’s,” General Audience (October 1, 1997), §3, https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/marys-mediation-derives-from-christs-8086. ↩︎
15. BDAG, s.v. “προσκυνέω.” Compare Matt 18:26, where the same verb describes a servant falling before his master. ↩︎