Further thoughts on the discipline of the Rosary

In his recent post "Praying Like Tolkien (and WJT)," Leo, a fellow unchurched Mormon, reflects on his difficulties with prayer and his recent experiments with praying the Rosary in Latin (without a physical rosary, but following the same sequence of prayers I use). There's a lot of food for thought in his post, and much of his experience parallels my own. Rather than write an inordinately long (and non-searchable) comment on his blog, I'll give some of my thoughts here.

1. Real intent of heart

Leo mentions that this passage from the Book of Mormon had made him leery of saying routine prayers of any kind:

For behold, if a man being evil giveth a gift, he doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift; wherefore he is counted evil before God.

And likewise also is it counted evil unto a man, if he shall pray and not with real intent of heart; yea, and it profiteth him nothing, for God receiveth none such (Moro. 7:8-9).

I have a few things to say about this. First of all, note that if an evil man gives a gift grudgingly, "it is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift" -- not worse, just the same. In other words, if you're considering giving a gift but worry that your intentions may not be sufficiently pure, don't worry about it. Just give the gift; you've got nothing to lose, and the person who receives the gift may benefit from it. Likewise with prayer. If a may prays without "real intent of heart," Moroni doesn't say he'll bring down the wrath of God or anything, just that "it profiteth him nothing." That's the worst that can happen as a result of praying: nothing.

The most important Book of Mormon teaching about prayer is Nephi's: "the evil spirit teacheth not a man to pray, but teacheth him that he must not pray" (2 Ne. 32:8). If you're afraid to pray, lest, as Leo writes, you "risk doing it wrong" -- if your feeling is that you'd better not pray -- the spirit that teaches you so to think is not a good one. And conversely, if you feel prompted to pray -- even to pray something a bit strange, like the Dominican Rosary even though you're not Catholic -- that prompting is not from an evil spirit.

So even if you are sometimes guilty of praying without "real intent of heart," it's not the end of the world. That particular prayer is wasted, that's all. It's not something to worry unduly about. (In context, I assume that "God receiveth none such" means that God receives no such prayers, not that he will reject people who have sometimes prayed that way.)

What exactly constitutes "real intent of heart" is up for interpretation, I guess, but I think it should be taken fairly literally. Your intent is your purpose in doing something. It doesn't require that you be consciously thinking about that purpose all the time, much less that you be experiencing a particular emotional state. If, for example, my reason for establishing the routine of praying before meals is that I wish to pause regularly to acknowledge God as the source of blessings, that remains my "real intent" even though, routine being routine, I may often pray more or less on autopilot without experiencing any deep emotion of gratitude.

2. Doctrinal quibbles

Leo feels uncomfortable reciting the Apostles' Creed both because of the general Mormon belief that (as Joseph Smith was told in his First Vision) all "creeds" of Smith's day "were an abomination" and specifically because it includes a profession of belief in "the holy Catholic Church."

The specific issue with the "Catholic reference" is relatively easy to solve. Since my mother's family is Lutheran, and I've heard them recite the Apostles' Creed in their weekly services, I am well aware that not everyone understands the "holy catholic church" (to use the capitalization favored by Protestants) to be the Roman Catholic Church. Catholic simple means "universal," and the holy catholic church is the body of all true Christians, not necessarily corresponding to a single earthly institution. This is a Mormon-compatible concept: "Behold there are save two churches only; the one is the church of the Lamb of God, and the other is the church of the devil" (1 Ne. 14:10). The Church of the Lamb of God, however defined, is this holy catholic church.

In more general terms, of course anyone whose beliefs are significantly different from Roman Catholic doctrine is likely to have questions about some of the content of the Rosary prayers. I had my own issues with this when I was new to the Rosary, and I discuss how these issues were resolved in my 2022 post "Praying the Rosary in Latin." As recounted there, when I asked God directly how I was to deal with some of the off-puttingly "Catholic" aspects of the Rosary, I was told, "Don't worry about doctrinal quibbles. It's supposed to be like singing a hymn, not writing a theological treatise." I was also instructed to read a particular book by the French Catholic magician Éliphas Lévi, which I did, and one of the important passages I found there was this:

[T]he popular forms of doctrine . . . alone can vary and alone destroy one another; the Kabalist is not only undisturbed by trivialities of this kind, but can provide on the spot a reason for the most astonishing formulae. It follows that his prayer can be joined to that of humanity at large, to direct it by illustrations from science and reason and draw it into orthodox channels. . . .

Could anything alienate the true initiate from public prayers and temples, could anything raise his disgust or indignation against religious forms of all kinds, it would be the manifest unbelief of priests or people, want of dignity in the ceremonies of the cultus -- in a word, the profanation of holy things.

What I got from this -- the message I personally was to get from it, not necessarily applicable to others -- was that it is important to maintain some kind of connection with the prayers and worship "of humanity at large." To follow one's own intuitions and understanding, yes, but not to become entirely a quirky sect-of-one. Even as I pursue my own freewheeling "Romantic Christian" path, I place considerable importance on regular engagement with the Bible and the Rosary, and even occasional participation in public worship of various sorts.

3. The internalization of the Rosary

Part of the point of the repetitiveness of the Rosary is to make it part of yourself, like breathing. Even at this early stage in his experiment, Leo is starting to experience a bit of that. He writes:

Overall, though, I do like the experiment. I have found myself throughout the day chanting random pieces of the Rosary, even parts I don’t really understand or have fully memorized. Just little bits and pieces that come back to me even though I’m not trying to think of them. For some reason they come to mind and mouth at random times, which probably isn’t a bad thing.

This still happens to me, too. With time, though, what spontaneously comes to mind throughout the day is not the prayers only but the meditations, the state of mind. Valentin Tomberg wrote of the concentration-without-effort symbolized by the Magician card:

With time, the silence or concentration without effort becomes a fundamental element always present in the life of the soul. It is like the perpetual service at the church of Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre which takes place, whilst in Paris one works, one trades, one amuses oneself, one sleeps, one dies.

I quoted this in my 2021 post "Silent and spoken prayer," written before the Rosary as such was part of my life. I still think of of this as the ultimate form prayer should take -- the meaning of scriptural injunctions to "pray always" and "pray without ceasing." Now, after some two years with the Rosary, I can say it is extremely helpful, to me anyway, in gradually bringing about that "Sacre-Coeur de Montmartre" state.

Marcus Aurelius wrote, "The student as boxer, not fencer. The fencer's weapon is picked up and put down again. The boxer's is part of him. All he has to do is clench his fist."

The lowercase rosary -- the beads -- is a sword. The capital Rosary -- the prayers and meditations -- is a fist.