Heschmeyer Defends the Rosary, Half Bad, Half Good

Or quarter bad, three quarters good.

Does the Bible Condemn the Rosary ? (Answer to DLM Christian Lifestyle)
Shameless Popery | 9 Sept. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc-uFyfpGG4

2:34 I avoid the term "unbiblical" or at least try to.

Instead of this, if its not in the Bible as such, I speak of not Biblical or extra-Biblical. Or not explicitly Biblical.
If it's against the Bible, I use the term "anti-Biblical" ...

4:56 I don't think mechanical repetition cuts it either.

When praying the Rosary, and when distracted, one time after time would at least for a few moments fall into mechanical repetition, before you start thinking of the fact you were praying and supposed to meditate on mysteries. So, if "mechanical repetition" were the issue, the Rosary would be, if not forbidden, at least inadvisible. Just as going into a bar with ten friends who are already a bit tipsy doesn't automatically mean you drink alcohol, but is likely to lead to it, and that would be inadvisible to an alcoholic (which I'm not) needing total abstinence to recover.

In fact, Jesus gives us a clue. He says "like the heathens" and He doesn't mean in context Hindoos, Buddhists or Muslims, He means Greco-Roman pagans and a few more.

We have a Pagan prayer from the same year, sixteenth year of Tiberius. It's in the very end of Velleius Paterculus. There is nothing mechanical, and there are no overt verbal repetitions about it.

The kind of stuttering one can read into it is the stuttering of a nervous person. Like Edmund stuttering to the White Witch, once he's in her palace.

Velleius is starting over and over again, in the hope of getting to exactly the right divinity with words exactly calculated to appeal to that divinity to have the prayer answered. Including epithet. Perhaps he didn't get it right with Upholding Jove (Jupiter Stativus), so, he turns to Mars too (forgetting his epithet) and to Vesta (forgetting hers) ... with all those pleas, surely one of them must be the right plea to explain to one of the gods why it's a good idea for them to hear what he's asking?

It's obviously the exact opposed confidence He's inviting us to have to God, Who knows our needs and cares for us, before we speak. The boy who had anular pancreas didn't run around between Carlo Acutis, Thérèse of Lisieux, God the Father, God the Son, making exquisite speeches meant to make a good impression. He prayed with a relic of Carlo Acutis in the simplest possible words and had a full meal that very evening, without throwing up.

5:01 No, a mechanic repetition is NOT what Jesus warns against.

1) That's "thrallein" (like you would do when learning a verb paradigm or learning the lyrics of a song) and the thing banned is "battalogein" (stutter-speak)
2) That's not an issue with the then and there paganism.

If you'd object to this referring to Pervigilium Veneris, which repeats over and over again "cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit cras amet" this text is so late it is, while overtly Pagan, pretty certainly influenced by Christianity and perhaps even done by Christians cosplaying as Pagans, unless it's by Tiberianus (Neo-Platonic, on that account somewhat closer to Christians than a Classic pagan), and on top of that, it's not even a prayer.

Pretending Jesus warns against mechanic repetition is taking over bad theology and exegesis from Protestants.

11:30 In this second part, you are much better than on Matthew 6:7.

You have nailed it, a certain objection is logical only if it comes from JWs, Muslims or Jews (not meaning Jews for Jesus, but like Tovia Singer). From any actual Christian, it's totally demented.

13:25 Wait, is that also rooted in Charles Spurgeon?

I was just aware of his (rather selective) idea of persisting until someone is saved, or if in fact damned, he should be dying cursing those who tried to save him.

For some reason, he never applied this treatment to politicians causing a manmade starvation on Ireland, but only to the poor, not least people in the street ...

If ever I do make some kind of fan fic on Nimrod, I think I need to make him a Gnostic as well as a slave hunter, considering Spurgeon.

They make a curious exception for a material Bible, printed on paper, though. Their one material sacramental, one would say ...