Why A Former Evangelical Loves the Rosary

Catholic Online ^ | February 26, 2014 | Fr. Dwight Longenecker

[NYer]

GREENVILLE, SC (Catholic Online) - In his conversion story Rome Sweet Home Scott Hahn, the once staunchly anti-Catholic Presbyterian minister describes how, as a fervent Evangelical teenager, he discovered his grandmother's rosary beads. His grandmother had just died and the young Scott Hahn ripped the rosary in pieces crying out, "God, set her free from the chains of Catholicism that have bound her!"

Since then, Scott has discovered the power of the rosary and has written a beautiful book about the Blessed Virgin Mary called Hail Holy Queen. Scott is not the only Evangelical to have discovered the rosary. I was brought up in a similar background. After college I went to England to study and was eventually ordained an Anglican priest. As an Anglican priest I used to make my annual retreat at the Benedictine monastery of Quarr Abbey.  Just as I was about to leave for retreat a parishioner gave me a rosary. She had just returned from a pilgrimage to the medieval shrine of Walsingham and had felt led to buy me this gift. I had never used the rosary, and was prejudiced against it.

One of my guiding principles, however, was a little saying I had discovered while a student. It is, "A person is most often right in what he affirms and wrong in what he denies."

So I looked at the rosary and asked myself why I was denying something used by millions of fellow Christians. Who was more likely to be right-me or the millions? So I went to the monastery gift shop and found a little book of instruction and started to learn my way around that "chain of prayer that binds us to God."

[NYer]

Fr Dwight Longenecker is the author of Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing. Visit his blog, listen to his radio show, subscribe to his weekly newsletter and be in touch at dwightlongenecker.com

[NYer]

One of the best things about Evangelicals is their emphasis on having a "personal relationship with Jesus". Often that means they regard Christ as a friend and brother. That is good, but Jesus Christ is also our Lord and God. Because of this our relationship with him should also be one of adoration and love. What they don't understand is that the rosary draws us closer to Christ in an amazing way.

Ping!

[cuban leaf]

I discovered the rosary when I met my wife, a protestant who was a devout Catholic until her mid-30’s. It’s an interesting, but long, story.

But I didn’t discover it the way this guy did. I discovered it in the same way I discovered the koran after 911

[aimee5291]

I pray Rosary daily...
thanks for posting

[Dr. Thorne]

I can guarantee there are many more Catholics who became Evangelicals than the other way around. The veil has been rent asunder and we may approach the Throne of God boldly. So many Catholics have discovered this and been freed from the control of men and stepped directly into the Light of the World.

[Cicero]

As an Anglican convert to Catholicism while studying at Harvard (not what my Harvard professors would have wished), I was a bit standoffish of the Rosary at first. But I have come to the point of saying it daily, in the evening.

Just about all the prayers in the Rosary are biblical. The Apostle’s Creed, which is a kind of summary of Bible teachings. The Lord’s Prayer, which Christ himself commanded us to use. And the Hail Mary, which Protestants may at first find disturbing. But the first half of the Hail Mary is straight from the Bible—the words of the Archangel to the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation. And the second half asks Mary to pray for us, “that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.” It is not an adoration of Mary, not idolatry, but a fervent request that the Mother of God will intercede for us with her Son, and will help to show us her Son.

Finally, each decade ends with a Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. . . .” So, we pray to all three persons of the Trinity in the course of saying the rosary, as well as asking Mary’s intercession. Jesus Himself said to the servants at the wedding feast of Cana, “Do whatever she tells you.” Because Mary will never say or do anything that goes against His wishes.

As for the Mysteries of the Rosary, those two are basically biblical, and they are centered on the life of Jesus, or on Mary giving birth to Jesus, presenting or finding him in the Temple, and so on. It is because all that she does is directed toward God that the Bible says that “all generations” will call Mary blessed.

[PatriotGirl827]

Me too Aimee! I love the rosary and it has been life changing for me.

[Cicero]

“Those two” should be “Those too.”

[Campion]

I can guarantee there are many more Catholics who became Evangelicals than the other way around.

Majority vote doesn't define truth.

[NKP_Vet]

“I can guarantee there are many more Catholics who became Evangelicals than the other way around”

You are kidding right?

[heights]

Oh brother.

[stanne]

Control of men? There is no indication of that in the Catholic Church. No

[heights]

Same here.

[AnAmericanMother]

I think it's the other way around . . .

"His mother saith to the waiters: Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye." -John 2:5.

Mary always points the way to her Son.

[stanne]

Nor does some random statement without any references

[AnAmericanMother]

I happen to know Father, btw. He’s a good man and a good priest.

[NKP_Vet]

How about these protestants praying the rosary.

http://www.catholic.org/prwire/headline.php?ID=11482&wf=rsscol

One of the surviving POWs, who will be at the award ceremony in April at the White House, said Fr. Kapaun was murdered by Chinese prison camp guards in 1951 because he openly defied many of the camp rules, including praying the rosary with other prisoners. Mike Dowe, who like dozens of other survivors of the camp has petitioned both Congress and the Vatican for these honors, recalls that by the time Kapaun died, Protestants and men of other beliefs were praying the Catholic rosary and were openly resisting the Chinese torture.

[xone]

Majority vote doesn't define truth.

And yet, the theory that it does is in the article itself.

So I looked at the rosary and asked myself why I was denying something used by millions of fellow Christians. Who was more likely to be right-me or the millions?

[Gamecock]

I know why!

Because deep down we are all idolaters!

[JPX2011]

The answer is in the wording: “why was I denying”. Always the rejection first before evaluation. To say no is the default position. In that sense its not a question of majorities. It is his own personal search as to why he was saying no to the Rosary. The mention of the multitudes who believe and use the rosary is not an appeal to authority by way of majority but the inner struggle to define the reasoning for his own personal rejection of so many.