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Dear Father Angelo,

Lately I have become a Protestant Christian, so I no longer pray to the Saints or Our Lady.
However, I kind of miss praying the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Would it be okay if I prayed it with Our Fathers instead of Hail Marys?

Another question: why do Catholics confess their sins to a priest, rather than going directly to God? There is no indication regarding this particular method of forgiveness in the Bible. On the contrary, in the gospel of Mathew we read: “But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions” (Mt 6:15).

I wish you a very good day and may God bless you for all the work you do for the spread of Christianity.

Priest’s answer

Dear reader,

1.My heart hurts for you who have abandoned the catholic church, and so the prayer addressed to the Saints and Our Lady.

Regarding Our Lady, the Blessed Mother, I ask you to think about what I am going to write to you now. 

In the Gospel of John, we read:

“When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home” (Jn. 19:26-27).

Jesus did not entrust his mother to St. John so he could take care of his aging mother. In fact, “Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala” (Jn. 19:25).
Mary, the mother of Jesus, had relatives. They would all have been delighted to welcome her in their houses. Why entrust her to a stranger while relatives were there beside her? Wouldn’t that have been an offense to those relatives and to his own mother? Why then Jesus on the cross entrusted his mother to a stranger?

The reason is a simple, clear one: at that moment, John represented each of us, the Church, the whole world.

2. From the very beginning, the Church has always held Our Lady in special consideration.

This is further  testified in the Acts of the Apostles. In the narration of facts occurred just before the Pentecost, we read:

“All these devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, together with some women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers” (Acts 1:14).

If the first christians had not given special consideration to Our Lady, we would only read “together with some women.” Instead, “Mary, the mother of Jesus” is especially mentioned.

Furthermore, in St. John’s Gospel Our Lady is never called by her name (Mary), but always and exclusively by “Mother”.

Can you now see it?

3. The devotion to the Blessed Mother belongs to the christian faith since the very beginning, so much so that witnesses of christians appealing to “Our Lady’s intercession and protection” date back to the first centuries of Christianity.

This becomes evident when we consider the oldest known Marian prayer, dated back to the II-III Century AD, “Beneath Thy Protection” (Sub tuum praesidium): 

“We fly to thy protection,

O Holy Mother of God;

Do not despise our petitions

in our necessities,

but deliver us always

from all dangers,

O Glorious and Blessed Virgin”

4. Why did you abandon our Blessed Mother? What did you gain when you abandoned her, whom Jesus Christ donated to you as your Mother?

5. Elizabeth, moved by the Holy Spirit, began to praise Our Lady: “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb” (Luke 1:42). Why can’t you too do so?

Don’t you think those words were also written for you to tell you that if you start praising Our Lady, you can be filled with the Holy Spirit like Elizabeth?

Of one thing we can be certain: when a person stops praising Our Lady, he certainly does not do so because he is moved by the Holy Spirit.

6. I regret your decision to abandon Our Lady. It did not come from God, but from elsewhere.

7. I ask you: try to go back to Her.

St. Bernard wrote for everyone, from ever and everywhere when he wrote that beautiful prayer that we know as “Memorare“:

“Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, and sought thy intercession, was left unaided.

Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother, to thee I come, before thee I stand sinful and sorrowful.

O Mother of the Word Incarnate! despise not my petitions, but, in thy mercy, hear and answer me.

Amen.”

8. The time will come when you too will need Her help in the same way the bride and the groom at Cana needed.

The sacred text makes it clear that Jesus went there because his Mother was there.

He would not have performed the miracle if He had not been prompted by Her, so much so that His first response was: “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not yet come” (Jn. 2:4). But through Our Lady’s intervention, that hour was brought forward.

9. I will now turn to the intercession of the saints.

God said to Job’s friends:

“Now, therefore, take seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up a holocaust for yourselves; and let my servant Job pray for you; for his prayer I will accept, not to punish you severely. For you have not spoken rightly concerning me, as has my servant Job.”  (Job 42:8)?

Do we not read in Revelation that in heaven “the smoke of the incense along with the prayers of the holy ones went up before God from the hand of the angel” (Rev. 8:4).

What do you think? Are these saints not the members of this pilgrim church we have on earth, the same who belong to the church in heaven?

10. You ask if the Hail Marys of the Rosary can be substituted with the Our Father.

Certainly you could do so. The ancient monks, many of whom were illiterate, in place of the psalms recited many Our Fathers and counted them with a string wrapped in knots.

11. But why not recite the Hail Mary at least in its first part? These are the words that Heaven, through the angel, greeted her, together with the words that Elizabeth, moved by the Holy Spirit, used to greet Mary.

Until the XVI Century the Hail Mary was recited only in its first part. Then the second part: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen” was added later.

12. In your last question you refer to Matthew 6:15: “But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions”.

I ask you, did the Lord say that we are forgiven our sins in that specific moment?

No, He said that a precondition for being forgiven by God is to forgive our neighbor.

But the moment when God forgives us is the one he himself set on the day of his resurrection, when he said:

“Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained” (Jn. 20:23).

Here Jesus links his forgiveness to the forgiveness of the apostles, to the forgiveness of the Church.

What the apostles do not forgive, neither does He forgive.

And the apostles can forgive or not forgive only if sins are reported to them.

One cannot pretend that the Lord did not say these words.

13. It is implied that if the apostles and their successors see that one is not willing to forgive one’s neighbor, they cannot give absolution of sins.

And it is equally implied that if one is silent about his willingness not to forgive his neighbor, however much the apostles then give absolution, it is not applied to them because Jesus’ words in Matthew 6:15 apply.

In this case, the sacrament of emittance is profaned and sacrilege is committed.

I thank you for the cordial and sincere wish you placed at the end of your email. I reciprocate it from my heart.

I accompany it with prayer and bless you.

Father Angelo