Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
History and Religion
Marian Devotion is NOT Idolatry! (vs. Sean Luke)

Marian Devotion is NOT Idolatry! (vs. Sean Luke)

Last updated on: July 24, 2026 at 2:35 pm by Dave Armstrong

0 Comments

Marian Devotion is NOT Idolatry! (vs. Sean Luke) 2026-07-24T14:35:26-04:00 Dave Armstrong

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Sean Luke obtained Masters of Divinity and Masters of Systematic Theology degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Very impressive! He runs the YouTube channel, Anglican Aesthetics, where he made a video called, “Roman Catholic Maryolatry – Why Roman Marian Devotion is a Problem” (5-2-24). We’ll be critiquing some of the claims he makes that are demonstrably false and unbiblical, as it turns out. Sean gets down to brass tacks in proclaiming the following:

4:49 I don’t think Rome is intending to include Mary in the Divine identity, but that functionally prayer and the Liturgy cultivate these affections in the heart that are idolatrous, that are unfitting towards a creature. So first we’re going to take a look at consecration prayers. This is a consecration prayer. I think this is the Morning Consecration . . . this is addressed to Mary:

We consecrate to thee our very being and our whole life, all that we have, all that we love, all that we are to thee, we give our bodies, our hearts, and our souls.

It’s fascinating and ironic that Sean would make such an argument about “bodies” — seeing that he is an Anglican, and noting that the wedding vows in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer uses very similar language to that which Sean contends ought to be applied only to God: “With this ring I thee wed; with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow”.

An AI Overview on this offered some interesting observations:

It signifies total bodily fidelity, respect, and the offering of one’s whole self, body and soul, to the partner.
Meaning of “Worship”: In this context, “worship” does not mean treating the partner as a deity. Instead, it uses the older English meaning (derived from “worth-ship”) of honoring, respecting, and giving honor to the spouse.
Significance: It implies a holistic commitment, including sexual fidelity and devotion. It is a promise to care for and honor the spouse’s body.

And of course, this reflects St. Paul’s teaching:

1 Corinthians 7:4 (RSV) For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not rule over his own body, but the wife does.

It’s encouraging that Sean knows that we don’t worship Mary as God. Kudos to him for that. It’s not exactly rocket science to figure it out, but sadly, many Protestants think that we make Mary a goddess and that we adore her like God. It’s just a coincidence, I guess, that they never cite an official document of the Church where we ever proclaim such a ludicrous and blasphemous thing.

Sean makes a more subtle argument. Yeah, Catholics don’t think Mary is God, yet in allowing words like the above – so he contends –, it opens the way to gullible souls believing that way, anyway, because these terms are properly applied only to God. So he expands his argument with the following examples:

5:32 Okay, so think about that phrase, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your body”, right, so this language appears in the Old Testament to describe people’s relation to Yahweh.

Well yes, that is a well-known phrase applied to following God in a heartfelt way, but it’s not exclusive to God, and this is what he would have to demonstrate if his argument here is to be compelling or even all that persuasive. He doesn’t do so, so we will do his necessary work for him. Here are many biblical passages of similar (if not identical) “heart language” (one even includes the “soul” too), but it’s applied to other human beings, not God. All the verse numbers will be in the PDF we offer and the linked transcript as well.

King David says about some others, “my heart will be knit to you” (1 Chr 12:17, RSV). The earliest Christians were described as being “of one heart and soul” (Acts 4:32). St. Paul talks about his own Jewish people: “my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (Rom 10:1). He makes a number of similar statements to the Corinthians: “our heart is wide” (2 Cor 6:11), “widen your hearts also” (2 Cor 6:13), “Open your hearts to us” (2 Cor 7:2), “you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together” (2 Cor 7:3), “his [i.e., Titus’] heart goes out all the more to you” (2 Cor 7:15), “thanks be to God who puts the same earnest care for you into the heart of Titus” (2 Cor 8:16).

If we asked a Protestant who it is that we sing psalms and hymns to, they would say, “God.” So would most Catholics. But in Ephesians, Paul makes the remarkable statement, “be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Eph 5:18-19). In the same letter he writes, “Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, . . . in singleness of heart, as to Christ; . . . as servants of Christ” (Eph 6:5-6). Paul tells the Philippians, “I hold you in my heart” (Phil 1:7) and refers to “hearts” that are “knit together in love” (Col 2:2). When he sends Onesimus to someone else, he says that he is, “sending my very heart” (Philem 1:12).

St. Peter urges among his readers a “sincere love of the brethren” and to “love one another earnestly from the heart” (1 Pet 1:22) and to “have unity of spirit, sympathy, love of the brethren, a tender heart” (1 Pet 3:8).

So we see all of this! yet Sean — despite all of it — is here to tell us that we must not utter words of consecration of our hearts to Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus, under pain of making her in effect equal to God or God-like? It’s biblically absurd to make a claim like this.

If Sean wants to see more biblical language that includes “soul” referring to another person (or in some cases to obedience to the Mosaic Law) rather than directly to God, there are many examples of that, too. He could have looked this up, as I did, but he didn’t, so now he will have to incorporate all of this into his thinking (and hopefully be more fair and understanding to Catholics, as a result):

“your friend who is as your own soul” (Deut 13:6), “This day the LORD your God commands you to do these statutes and ordinances; you shall therefore be careful to do them with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deut 26:16; cf. 30:2, 10; Josh 22:5; 1 Kgs 2:4; 2 Kgs 23:3, 25; 2 Chr 15:12; 34:31).

1 Samuel 18:1, 3 When he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. [3] Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul.

1 Samuel 20:17 And Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him; for he loved him as he loved his own soul.

Job 30:25 . . . Was not my soul grieved for the poor?

2 Corinthians 12:15 I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you the more, am I to be loved the less?

Sean continues making these unwarranted statements about Catholic devotion to Mary in his video:

4:17 We are Yahweh’s property; we are his slaves . . . we belong to Him. I’m going to argue that these features of Yahweh’s unique Divine identity are transposed onto Mary in the Liturgy.

Seriously? He wants to make this argument? Okay, let’s go through profound servant language, referring to human-to-human relationships, and not just man-to-God (is all of this idolatry and making others similar to God, too?):

Jesus said, “whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve” (Mt 20:26-28), “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed” (1 Cor 3:5), “I have made myself a slave to all, that I might win the more” (1 Cor 9:19), “with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. (2 Cor 4:5; cf. Col 1:7; 4:7; Philem 1:13), “through love be servants of one another” (Gal 5:13), “Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, . . . in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord. . . . as serving the Lord and not men” (Col 3:22-23), “Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect” (1 Pet 2:18).

Sean continues with more examples of supposed Mariolatry:

13:04 “it is through your hands that all graces come to us from the most Sacred Heart of Jesus”: so she’s being viewed as a mediator here that dispenses grace from the heart of Jesus to the people of God . . .

Yes, just as we see many passages in Scripture of human beings being instruments of grace and even salvation. We’ll link to an article of mine where I provided no less than 18 biblical examples of this. But Sean continues, leaving himself wide open to massive biblical counter-arguments:

15:18 the typical response of Roman Catholics is, “well, prayers to Mary are prayers to Jesus,” so some Roman Catholics will admit this sort of high level of devotion and say, “but it’s really that I’m devoting through her to Jesus. I’m offering this devotion to Jesus through her.” The problem is, you could justify any idolatrous act that way. So I could . . . use the superlative language of my wife, if I could say, “all that I am is yours; I am your property,” and say, “well I’m really speaking about Jesus.” You could justify any sort of idolatrous statement by saying, “well it’s really to God”: when Scripture does not direct such language to God.

The Bible, in fact, often uses language that refers simultaneously to a person and to God, doing or referring to the same thing:

“it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (Mt 10:20; cf. Ex 4:12; Luke 12:11-12), “as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40), “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth . . . we are God’s fellow workers” (1 Cor 3:6, 9), “there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in every one” (1 Cor 12:6), “by the grace of God I am what I am, . . . I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me” (1 Cor 15:10), “always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Cor 15:58), “we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us” (2 Cor 5:20), “in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col 1:24).

Sean then objects to Mary receiving any glory:

17:03 she receives glory . . . it’s legitimate according to Rome to say that . . . the whole world is full of her glory.

This is very odd. Lots of people receive glory from God. Has Sean never looked up the word “glory” in a concordance? That’s what God desires. That being clear in the Bible (and it is), why couldn’t Mary the Immaculate Mother of God plausibly receive more than any other creature? If one actually thinks biblically and not merely in a wrongheaded knee-jerk reaction to anything in Catholicism that is rejected, this is not the slightest difficulty:

Paul says that “we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God” (Rom 5:2), and that we are “being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18). He tells the Thessalonians that they are “called . . . so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess 2:14). Peter writes that “the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you” (1 Pet 4:14), and says that he himself is “a partaker in the glory that is to be revealed” (1 Pet 5:1; cf. 5:4) and that God “called us to his own glory and excellence” and to “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:3-4). There are many more such passages, too, that we’ll link to in the description.

Lastly, the Bible teaches from beginning to end that prayers of more righteous people have more effect, so that if we really want to get an answer from God, and His aid, we ought to find the most righteous person we can find and ask him or her to pray for us to God. That was Moses and Abraham and Samuel and Jeremiah in the Old Testament, and it’s the same in the new, with James, chapter 5 illustrating the principle through the example of Elijah stopping the rain for three-and-a-half years. I proved this biblical principle and strong theme with scores of passages, in another article that we will link to.

And so this is why we ask Mary to pray for us, more than anyone else, because she’s the holiest created human being who ever lived. Remember, Sean himself stated, early in his video “She is an exemplar for faith and I hope — I really do hope — she’s praying for me. . . . She is a righteous woman and so we ought to hold her in high esteem.” That’s what we’re doing. She prays for us, so we ask her to do so, which entirely follows from the first thing, and the extraordinary qualities of saints in heaven, that enable them to hear us. In this regard, see another paper of mine in the Resources.

RESOURCES

For much more on all of this, and Marian veneration in general, see:

Venerating Mary with Heart & Soul, Etc.: Bible Analogies

Jesus the Unique Mediator + “Mini-Mediators” (Human Beings on Earth & in Heaven, & Angels Help to Spread God’s Grace & Salvation, Including Through Intercession)

Bible Teaching: God’s Glory Shared with His Creatures

Bible on the Power of Prayers of the Righteous

Saints Can Hear “Millions” Of Prayers? (vs. Jordan Cooper): Including a Summary of the Extraordinary, Unfathomable Characteristics of Redeemed Human Beings in Heaven

DAVE’S BOOKS

Catholic E-Book Superstore (50 books!)

“The Catholic Mary” Quite Contrary to the Bible?

DAVE’S WEB PAGE

Mary: The Blessed Virgin (esp. section IX: veneration and devotions)

*****

Summary: Anglican apologist Sean Luke makes the usual accusations regarding what Protestants wrongly think is the nature of Catholic Marian veneration. We refute from the Bible.

*
***
*

Practical Matters: This is the most comprehensive and multi-faceted Catholic apologetics blog: rated #1 for Christian sites by leading AI tool, ChatGPT. I offer more than 5,000 free online articles, fifty-nine books, and many scores of videos at the Catholic Bible Highlights YouTube channel (please subscribe!). If you believe my full-time apostolate is worth supporting, please seriously consider financially supporting it. PayPal donations are the easiest: just send to my email address: [email protected]. You’ll see the term “Dave Armstrong Bookstore”. To learn about the different methods of contributing (including Zelle and 100% tax-deductible donations if desired), see my page: About Catholic Apologist Dave Armstrong / Donation Information. Thanks a million!

***

Previous Post

July 22, 2026

Reply to Anglican Sean Luke on Denominationalism

Next Post

July 31, 2026 Jerusalem Council vs. James White & Sola Scriptura

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"Special pleading, and not a serious response to my arguments . . ."

Dave Armstrong

Is Venerating Men & Angels Worship? ..."

""no man needs to teach us."Didn't you just teach us?"

Dave Armstrong

Is Venerating Men & Angels Worship? ..."

""Catholics say they are the only church that can lead people into heaven."In fact, we ..."

Dave Armstrong

Is Venerating Men & Angels Worship? ..."

"And lastly, I belong to no denomination and am free to serve God as He ..."

Mariah

Is Venerating Men & Angels Worship? ..."

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category & Last Things About Me Anti-Catholicism Atheism & Agnosticism Baptism and Sacramentalism Bible and Tradition Blessed Virgin Mary Books by Dave Armstrong C. S. Lewis Calvinism & General Protestantism Catholic Apologetics Catholic Apologists Catholic conversion Catholic converts Christmas Church (Ecclesiology) Church History Conversion and Converts Development of Doctrine Eastern Orthodoxy Ecumenism & Christian Unity Eucharist & Liturgy Fathers of the Church French Translations G. K. Chesterton Hell Hell & Satan Hell & Satan & Last Things Heresies & Comparative Religion Holistic Health Inquisition & Crusades & Scandals James White Jews & Judaism & Old Testament John Calvin John Henry Newman Liberal / Modernist Theology Life Issues Literary Resume Lutheranism Mariology Martin Luther Music Orthodoxy Papacy & Infallibility Personal Page Philosophy & Science Political & Ethical & Moral Issues Protestant Persecution & Intolerance Protestantism Purgatory Purgatory & Penance Romantic & Imaginative Theology Saints & Purgatory & Penance Salvation Salvation & Justification Satan & Last Things Sexuality and Gender Issues Spanish Translations Traditionalism vs. Radical Catholic Reactionaries Traducciones al español / tradução para português Trinitarianism & Christology Uncategorized Videos

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 April 2010 March 2010 December 2009 October 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 March 2009 February 2009 October 2008 September 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 May 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 October 2005 June 2005 April 2005 February 2005 July 2004 May 2004 April 2004

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz