One of my best friends did a deep dive on why Catholics and the Orthodox "pray to" Mary, and the saints, as is often said. He sent me scripture verses which are used in support of the position, and also ones which seem to argue against the position. I do plan to dig into scripture, but to be helpful I thought it would be fun to brain dump what I've always heard explained by Catholic priests and others for now.

It has been emphasized to me over and over that, as Catholics, we are not praying to Mary or the saints, even though in a shorthand manner of talking people sometimes phrase things that way. Rather, we are asking them to add their prayers to ours.

I'll start with the saints first. Notice that I used a lower-case "s". Everyone who dies and whose souls wind up in holy union with the Father in heaven are "lower-case s" saints. "Upper-case s" Saints are a subset of those to whom the Church has recognized via canonization.

As Catholics, when we say the word "communion", it means a very specific thing. I once taught this catechesis lesson to Henrietta years ago, and while I don't remember all of the groups exactly, it was something very close to: the people in the church building as we celebrate the Holy Mass; our fellow Catholics outside of the immediate church building; our non-Catholic brothers and sisters in Christ; the angels; and the deceased-- i.e. the "communion of saints".

We say this in the Confiteor during Holy Mass. I hold this as one of the most beautiful prayers ever written. Bold emphasis is mine:



And in the Eucharistic prayers:



Mary is a special case, and thanks to school I can actually understand the historical context behind this! I won't go into all of the details since entire libraries of books have been written about it already, but in the very early Church there was a huge debate between three terms, all relating to Christology: what is the essence of Christ's nature?

Some thought that Christ was more than one person: one divine, and one man. Others thought that Christ's divine natures and human natures were "bolted together" but totally separate; others thought that perhaps the human nature "dissolved" into the divine nature. The Church settled on the concept of the hypostasis-- that Christ became man, and fully assumed both divine and human natures.

Regardless, depending on how you answer that question leads directly into how you view Mary! If your view is that she only conceived of "Christ the man", then you might call her "anthropotokos"-- the bearer of another human. In that case, she's not that special really. If you think she conceived of one person of Christ but only the human nature part of him which is bolted on, then you might use the term "christotokos".

But if you're Catholic, Mary is "theotokos", the Mother of God. To be clear, the belief isn't that the Son didn't exist before Mary's womb. Rather, the understanding is that the hypostatis took place in her womb-- it was in that moment of conception within her that Christ became man, the whole of himself hypostatically in union.

With that Christology, Mary suddenly becomes a hugely important figure! Just like in the Miracle of Cana, where the people went to Mary-- "we're out of wine"-- and then she went to her son, so too we can ask Mary to intercede for us to Jesus. It's not that we need Mary to get to Jesus! But we're asking for her to pray with us, in the same way we ask our friends to pray for us.

I once read of a Saint who was asking Jesus for a special grace. Every night she prayed-- and the grace was not granted. Finally one night in frustration, she said "Don't make me go to your mom!", and the next day she received the grace. Whether you believe that story or not, it illustrates very well the Catholic view of Mary.

A final thing to note, but it's a related topic: the statues, stained glass windows, and so forth in Catholic churches are not icons-- they are not being worshipped. They are what we call "devotional materials": by reflecting on them we can come to know and love God more fully. It's the same thing as Lectio or Visio Divina, which are favorite practices of many Protestants! It's not the actual paper in the Bible which is important.

Here is a personal testimony I wrote once, where all of the imagery in the church building helped me along in my understanding of the salvation Jesus purchased for us on the cross. Had the church just been blank walls, I wouldn't have had this understanding some to me, or at least not in this special way!

Also, as Catholics we believe that Jesus is literally present in the tabernacle, so we want to build a nice house-- after all, God lives there! If we feel compelled to have a nice house for ourselves, should we not double that effort for the Lord?