Roman Catholic Maryology: Mary in Roman Catholicism, part 6 - Mary, Full of Grace?

At a glance:
The Bible teaches that it is God, it is Jesus, who is full of grace. The Catholic prayer Hail Mary includes some un-biblical teachings.

Roman Catholic Prayer, “Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among woman, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”This prayer is also known as the Angelic Salutation or Ave Maria.
The Bible never refers to Mary as being full of grace. Rather, the Bible makes it clear that it is God who is full of grace.
The Catholic Catechism #2466 agrees, “In Jesus Christ, the whole of God’s truth has been made manifest. ‘Full of grace and truth,’ he came as the ‘light of the world,’ he is the Truth.”
Yet the Catechism #491 also attributes the same title to Mary, “^{Through the centuries the Church has become ever more aware that Mary, ‘full of grace’ through God, was redeemed from the moment of her conception}.”

New American Bible:
John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.”

The New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ:
John 1:14, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. And we saw his glory—glory as of the only-begotten of the Father—full of grace and truth.”
The footnote to this verse states, “1, 14: Dwelt: the Greek term has the meaning ‘he pitched his tent among us.’ Grace: the fullness of the supernatural life. Truth: the fullness of divine wisdom and knowledge. Grace and Truth are often used in the Old Testament as qualities of the divine nature, and have the meaning of ‘loving-kindness’ and ‘fidelity.’ Here they modify ‘glory.’”

The New Testament Rendered from the Original Greek with Explanatory Notes:
John 1:14, “And the Word became man and lived among us; and we have looked upon his glory—such a glory as befits the Father’s only-begotten Son—full of grace and truth!”
The footnote to these verses states, “1:14. the Word became man: see verse 1, ‘the Word was God’—Christ is very God and very man. ‘Many deceivers have appeared in the world, who will not acknowledge that Jesus Christ has come in human flesh’ (2 Jn. 7). see the note on 6:61. his glory: the glory of his divinity, manifested in his teachings and miracles, and reflected in his human traits and demeanor. Also as man, Christ was ‘full of grace and truth.’ There is an affectionate recollection of the sacred humanity in 1 Jn. 1:1-4.”
The footnote to verse 6:61 states, “6:61. were grumbling: this grumbling may be said to have been the germ of the later heresy called ‘Docetism,’ which denied the reality of Christ’s human nature, and consequently undermined all Christian faith.”

The Sacred Heart League Edition:
John 1:14, “The Word became a human being and lived among us. We saw his glory, full of grace and truth. This was the glory which he received as the Father’s only Son.”

Vatican approved Bibles render the verse from which Hail Mary full of grace is derived:
New American Bible:
Luke 1:28 & 30 “Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you…Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.”

The New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ:
Luke 1:28 & 30 “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…Do not be afraid, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God.”

The New Testament of the New American Bible, Saint Joseph Edition1:
Luke 1:28, 30 “Rejoice, O highly favored daughter! The Lord is with you…Do not fear, Mary. You have found favor with God.”

The New Testament Rendered from the Original Greek with Explanatory Notes:
Luke 1:28 & 30 “Rejoice, child of grace! The Lord is your helper!…Do not tremble, Mary! You have found favor in the eyes of God.”
The footnote states:

…^{she must have been uniquely pleasing to God and possessed of an exceptionally abundant measure of ‘grace.’ Even so her ‘fullness’ was only relative, as that of other saintly men and woman} (e.g., John the Baptist, 1:15; Elizabeth, 1:41; Zachary, 1:67; Stephen, Acts 6:8)…
But since in the New Testament the word ‘grace’ at times means, not that inward endowment of the soul which we call ‘sanctifying grace,’ but a task, office, function, position, etc., imposed on men by the grace of God for some important work in the Church, and since it is not certain in which of these two senses the word was understood by the angel, it seems advisable in the translation to choose an expression that leaves this question undecided. The Challoner version ‘full of grace’ has therefore, been avoided. But whatever translation is adopted, the word ‘grace’ itself must be retained…
However, we interpret the Greek word, it means ‘a special grace has been conferred on you’ or ‘you are the recipient of a very special grace.’ Perhaps, however, the joyful as well as solemn moment when this announcement was made to Mary requires something less plain than this…

Catholic apologist Karl Keating even refers to the Vatican approved NAB translation “The Lord is with you” as an imperfect translation.2
Consider carefully that because Keating is Catholic and an apologist at that, he has accepted the apostolic authority of the Catholic Church as being the one true church founded and lead by God. How then could he state that this holy mother church could err when it approved the NAB translation of the Bible? Or is it a case of rejecting that which is inconvenient to his point of view, even when it contradicts that which the very church that gives him the authority of being an apologist has proclaimed?

New American Bible Fireside Family Edition—Encyclopedic Dictionary and Biblical Reference Guide,

The Hail Mary consists of three parts; the first two are taken from the New Testament, and the third was added by the Church. According to St. Luke, 1, 28, when the Angel Gabriel came to tell Mary she was to become the mother of God, he greeted her thusly, ‘Hail, favored one!
The Lord is with you.’ Luke 1,42 tells St. Elizabeth’s greetings to Mary when she came to visit her ‘Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.’ The Catholic Church added the final petition, ‘Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.’

Note carefully that it is the Catholic Church by her own admission, and not the Bible, that created the dogma of Mary being the mother of God, that she can pray for us and intercede for sinners while we are alive and at our death.
^{In the Bible there are only two sorts of prayer, one is prayer to God and the other is prayer to false gods}. Prayers to Mary have a long history of deviating from prayer to God as we see here, “The earliest prayer of petition addressed to Mary that has come down to us dates from the latter part of the third century. The oldest text, which may well have been a cry for help in the days of the martyrs under Diocletian (303), is the following: We take refuge under the protection of your motherly mercy, O Mother of God. Despise not our fervent cries for help in the necessity in which we find ourselves. But deliver us from danger. Rescue us. Do not lead our plea into temptation, but deliver us from danger.”3
It is clear to see that this prayer is a corruption of the one and only prayer that Jesus taught us, the Our Father or Lord’s Prayer. Rather than stating “Do not lead our plea into temptation, but deliver us from danger” the true and authentic prayer states, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil (or the evil one)” (Matthew 6:13). The authentic prayer is appropriately prayed to God the Father, not to Mary.

We will now mention the Rosary because its formula includes the Hail Mary. The following quote is taken from “The Story of the Rosary” which appears in the New American Bible Fireside Family Edition:

The Rosary originated about the year 1208…One night, while [St. Dominic was] praying in the chapel of Notre Dame at Prouille, Our Lady appeared to him, holding a Rosary in her hand. According to tradition, she taught him how to say it, and bade him teach it to the world….
The complete Rosary consists essentially of 15 Our Fathers and 150 Hail Marys; however, the Church has divided the original Rosary into three equal parts, each consisting of 5 Our Fathers and 50 Hail Marys, and these groups are called the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries…
Nowadays, when we speak of the Rosary, we usually refer to only one of the groups, that is, to one-third of the Rosary, which is the ordinary and more convenient length for recitation.

If Mary did come from heaven to earth in 1208 AD with specific instructions regarding the Rosary, one should wonder why it was changed, and changed out of pure convenience.
Moreover, Roman Catholic theologian Hans Küng has written, “the rosary, which was originally Hindu-Buddhist, then Islamic, and finally Christian.”4

Alan Schreck; Associate Professor of theology at the Franciscan University presents a common argument in favor of repetitive prayer, “When the rosary is said prayerfully, it is not a mindless repetition of rote prayer, but it is an occasion to reflect on these ‘mysteries of salvation.’” 5
Catholic apologists make such statements because Jesus taught, “and when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words” (Matthew 6:7). And so the argument states that Jesus was not actually teaching us that we should not pray repetitively rather, He was saying that we could do it but not in vain. Jesus was clearly speaking a warning to us that we are not to involve ourselves in the pagan religious practices of His day, which continue in our day.
Such as using a word or formula that one repeatedly recites in order to get worked up into an altered state of consciousness or clearing the mind. When we understand that the Bible teaches that prayer is intimate conversation between man and God, we instantly see that repetitive prayer is ridiculous. Certainly if my wife walked through the door and said to me ten times in a row “Hi, honey how are you? Nice to see you! Hi, honey how are you? Nice to see you! Hi, honey how are you? Nice to see you!…….” I would think that she had lost her mind, because I heard and understood it the first time. God hears and understands the first time but those who practice repetitive prayer think that they will be heard for their many words and in reality they are capriciously disobeying Jesus Christ.

The following quote is one of the Promises of Our Lady to Christians Who Recite the Rosary:

Whoever shall faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall receive signal graces…My special protection and the greatest graces…^{The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell…The soul which recommends itself to Me by the recitation of the Rosary, shall not perish…shall never be conquered by misfortune. God will not chastise him in His justice}…shall not die without the Sacraments of the Church…
I shall deliver from purgatory, those who have been devoted to the Rosary…You shall obtain all you ask of Me…be aided by Me in their necessities…all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors, the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of death…Devotion to My Rosary is a great sign of pre-destination.6

It is supposedly Mary making all of these promises to those who are devoted to her. The problem is that Mary, the true and real Mary, would never demand devotion to herself. Never demand devotion to a repetitive prayer (which her Son forbade). Would never use scare tactics such as promising that repetitive prayer to her is a powerful armor against hell. Neither would she claim to deliver people from purgatory, which is an un-Biblical tale (see our article Purgatory).

1. 1. Nihil Obstat: Stephen J. Hartdegem, OFM, SSL. and Christian P. Ceroke, O. Carm., S.T.D. Imprimatur: Patrick Cardinal O′Boyle, D.D. Archbishop of Washington (New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1970)
2. 2. Karl Keating; Director of Catholic Answers [a Catholic apologetics organization], Catholic and Fundamentalism, The Attack on “Romanism” by “Bible Christians” (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), p. 268
3. 3. Alan Schreck; Associate Professor of theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, Catholic and Christian, An Explanation of Commonly Misunderstood Catholic Beliefs (Ann Arbor, MI.: Servant Books, 1984), Nihil Obstat: Monsignor Joseph P. Malara-Censor Librorum. Imprimatur: Most Reverend Albert H. Ottenweller-Bishop of Steubenville. p. 182
4. 4. Hans Küng, Josef van Ess, Heinrich von Stietencron and Jeinz Bechert, Christianity and the World Religions—Paths to Dialogue with Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism (Garden City, New York; Doubleday & Co. Inc., 1986), p. 25
5. 5. Alan Schreck, p. 183
6. 6. ”The 15 Promises of Our Lady to Christians Who Recite the Rosary,” fatima.org/promises.html