Do We Worship Mary?

By Matthew Fumi

August 31, 2026 • View profile •

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Part 12 of She Magnifies the Lord: Why Catholic Devotion to Mary Leads Us to Christ

A Catholic response to common objections about Mary, Scripture, the Church, and the Communion of Saints

New to the series? Start here: Before We Talk About Mary, We Need to Talk About Truth

Missed the previous article?
Read it here: Does Mary Stand Between Us and Christ?

In the previous article, we examined why Mary’s intercession does not replace, rival, or compete with the one mediation of Jesus Christ. Her prayer has meaning only because His mediation is perfect, and all her maternal care is ordered toward Him. We now turn from what Catholics ask of Mary to the honor Catholics give her.

When Catholics call Mary blessed, invoke her as Queen, or sing hymns in her honor, are they offering a creature the worship that belongs to God alone? Is the distinction between adoration and veneration a real theological boundary, or merely a Catholic loophole? And how can the Church call Mary Queen of Heaven when Jeremiah condemns worship offered to a figure bearing the same title?

I. God Alone Is Adored

Another concern that often appears around Marian doctrine is whether Catholics worship Mary. This concern deserves a direct answer: the Catholic Church worships God alone. Mary is honored, loved, blessed, and venerated, but she is not adored. Adoration belongs to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit alone.

II. Three Terms, One Firm Line

The Church’s distinction here is not a loophole. It is a real theological boundary. Worship, or latria, is due to God alone. The honor given to the saints is traditionally called dulia. The unique honor given to Mary, because of her unique role in the mystery of Christ, is called hyperdulia. But neither dulia nor hyperdulia is worship. Mary receives the highest honor among creatures, but she remains a creature. She is not God, and she is not treated as God.

III. A Difference of Kind, Not Degree

The Catechism is careful on this point. It says that the Church’s devotion to Mary is “intrinsic to Christian worship,” but also that this devotion “differs essentially from the adoration which is given to the incarnate Word and equally to the Father and the Holy Spirit” (CCC 971). The phrase “differs essentially” establishes the boundary: the Church is not saying Mary receives a lesser amount of the same worship given to God. She is saying the kind of honor given to Mary is essentially different from the adoration owed to God alone.

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2025 doctrinal note Mater Populi Fidelis reinforces this Christ-centered boundary. It teaches that Marian devotion cannot be placed beside devotion to Christ as though Mary were an alternate religious center. Mary belongs entirely within the mystery of Christ and points toward Him as the only Way (§11). Attention given to Mary ceases to be authentically Marian if it distracts from Christ or raises her to the level of the Son of God (§66).

The note also rejects the opposite error of treating Marian devotion as something embarrassing that should be minimized. It presents Marian devotion as a treasure of the Church and teaches that the faithful do not distance themselves from Christ when they draw near to His Mother. In her, they encounter the mysteries of the Gospel reflected through the life of the first and most perfect disciple (§§77–78). Authentic veneration therefore neither adores Mary nor makes her irrelevant. It honors what God has accomplished in her and, with her, magnifies the Lord.

This is why honoring Mary is not a violation of Scripture. Scripture itself says that all generations will call her blessed. Mary says in the Magnificat, “For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:48). So the question is not whether Christians should bless Mary. Scripture says that they will. The question is how they should bless her: not as divine, not as a goddess, not as a rival to Christ, but as the lowly handmaid whom God exalted by grace.

IV. The ‘Queen of Heaven’ in Jeremiah

This also answers the objection sometimes raised from Jeremiah, where the prophet condemns worship offered to the “queen of heaven” (Jeremiah 7:18; 44:17–19). Jeremiah is condemning idolatrous worship offered to a false goddess, commonly identified as Ishtar or Astarte, a pagan fertility goddess whose cult had entered Israelite worship. Catholics reject that completely. The pagan “queen of heaven” condemned by Jeremiah is not Mary, and the worship condemned there is exactly the kind of worship the Catholic Church forbids giving to any creature. The shared phrase does not mean the same reality is being described. One is idolatry offered to a false goddess. The other is honor given to the Mother of the Davidic King, entirely subordinate to the worship of the one true God.

So if someone says, “Catholics worship Mary,” the answer is this: if they mean Catholics offer Mary the adoration due to God alone, then no. The Church condemns that. If they mean Catholics honor Mary above all other saints because God Himself honored her uniquely in the mystery of Christ, then yes. But that is not worship; that is biblical honor rightly ordered.

V. When Catholic Speech Causes Scandal

Whether individual Catholics always practice this distinction perfectly is a fair pastoral question. Whether the Church teaches the distinction is not in doubt.

At the same time, we have to be careful about what we mean by scandal. Sometimes Catholics do express Marian devotion in ways that appear scandalous, especially to those outside the walls of the Church, because the language is imprecise, exaggerated, or not clearly ordered back to Christ. That kind of scandal should not be dismissed. It can harm the faithful and confuse those sincerely trying to understand the Church. But not everything that offends those outside the Church is a failure of Catholic teaching. Sometimes the world is scandalized precisely because the Church refuses to surrender what Christ has entrusted to her. The Church’s teaching on abortion is an obvious example: many in the culture call it archaic, oppressive, or harmful to women, but the scandal there is not the Church’s fidelity to the dignity of unborn life; it is the culture’s moral failure to see that dignity. So the answer is not for the Church to bend herself to every outside accusation. The answer is for Catholics to express the Church’s teaching with greater fidelity, clarity, charity, and precision, which first requires knowing what the Church actually teaches. In that sense, this is exactly the kind of serious question Catholics should bring to the Church, because fidelity requires us to distinguish her actual teaching from both careless expression and hostile caricature.

VI. The Rule of the Magnificat

Also, the same principle applies to Catholic art, hymns, prayers, and devotions. They must be interpreted according to the Church’s doctrine, not according to the worst possible reading of isolated phrases. Some devotional language can sound excessive when detached from Catholic theology, and sometimes Catholics themselves speak carelessly. But authentic Marian devotion does not terminate in Mary. It magnifies the Lord with Mary and through Mary.

That is the whole logic of the Magnificat. Mary does not say, “My soul magnifies itself.” She says, “My soul magnifies the Lord” (Luke 1:46). The more truly Mary is honored, the more clearly God is praised for what He has done in her. If honoring Mary ever stops at Mary, it has lost its Catholic meaning. But when Mary is honored rightly, her own words become the rule of the devotion: “My soul magnifies the Lord.”

In Summary

Catholics do not worship Mary. Adoration belongs to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit alone. The honor given to the saints and the unique honor given to Mary are not lesser amounts of divine worship. They are essentially different acts directed toward creatures in whom the grace of God has borne fruit. Mary receives the highest honor given to any creature, but she remains a creature.

Scripture itself declares that all generations will call Mary blessed because the Almighty has done great things for her. Jeremiah, meanwhile, condemns idolatrous worship offered to a false goddess. He does not condemn the Christ-dependent honor given to the Mother of the Davidic King. The shared title “Queen of Heaven” does not make the persons or the acts of devotion identical.

Individual Catholics can speak or act in ways that obscure this distinction, and such failures should be corrected with clarity and charity. Yet authentic Marian devotion follows the rule given by Mary herself. If devotion terminates in Mary, it has lost its Catholic meaning. If it leads the faithful to praise God for His work, receive Christ more fully, and obey Him more faithfully, then it does what the Magnificat does: it magnifies the Lord.

In the next article, we will answer the specific objections raised against Marian intercession. If every good gift comes from God, why ask Mary for prayer? Does Scripture record any Christian asking a saint for intercession? What do Catholics mean by “praying to” Mary? And how should we understand devotional language that sounds excessive when separated from the doctrine of the Church?

Until we meet again, go forth in the peace of Christ. Seek truth over victory, speak with charity, and magnify the Lord. Read on.

Part 13 of She Magnifies the Lord: link coming soon.

About the Author

Catholic365 Contributor

Matthew Fumi

I am a Catholic, husband, father, systems engineer, and writer. My writing grows out of my own return to the Catholic faith after years of living largely apart from it, and from an ongoing interest in how the truths of the faith are actually lived in ordinary human life: in families, friendships, work, suffering, failure, repentance, vocation, and the slow work of conversion. My nonfiction writing focuses primarily on Catholic theology, catechesis, apologetics, and the spiritual life. I have written a theological work, God is Love. Love is not God., which is under ecclisial review, exploring charity as the organizing principle of the Christian life and examining ordered love, sin, grace, repentance, Confession, the sacramental life, Christian witness, and the human heart’s capacity both to receive and resist God’s love. I also regularly write and engage with questions of Scripture, Church authority, Catholic moral theology, conversion, ecumenism, and the relationship between doctrine and lived discipleship. Alongside that work, I am developing The Long Way Home, a Catholic middle-grade fiction series centered on ordinary family, school, and friendship life. Rather than using fiction primarily as a vehicle for explicit instruction, I want the characters’ choices and consequences to dramatize realities such as sin, grace, conscience, temptation, repentance, mercy, friendship, family, and ultimately vocation. The faith is therefore woven into the characters’ lives rather than placed alongside the story as a lesson. The larger project follows its characters as they grow, allowing questions of marriage, parenthood, priesthood, religious life, suffering, and death to emerge naturally over the course of their lives. Professionally, I work as a senior systems engineer in aerospace, where much of my work involves systems thinking, architecture, requirements, safety, and tracing complex relationships across a larger whole. That same habit of thought inevitably influences my writing. I tend to approach theology and fiction alike by asking how individual truths, choices, relationships, and consequences fit within the larger structure of a human life.

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