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Do Catholics worship Mary? No. And you don't have to take my word for it, because the Catechism says it in writing.
Paragraph nine seventy-one: devotion to Mary "differs essentially from the adoration" given to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Adoration, the kind of worship that says "you are God and I am your creature", belongs to God alone. Paragraph two thousand and ninety-seven.
So what is the honour Catholics give her? It's the honour Scripture already gives her. An angel greets her, "Hail, full of grace." Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, calls her blessed among women. And Mary herself says, "all generations shall call me blessed." When Catholics call her blessed, we're fulfilling her own prophecy.
Think of it like honouring your best friend's mother. You honour her because of who her son is. Every road that runs to Mary ends at Jesus.
Fair to the other side
The objection is usually about practice, not paper: statues, processions, and prayers that sound to an outsider like worship. That deserves a straight answer. The Church's own teaching (Catechism 2132) is that honour paid to an image passes to the person it shows and is "not the adoration due to God alone", and a Catholic who treated Mary as divine would be in error by the Church's own standard.
Sources
- Luke 1:28, 1:42 and 1:48
- Catechism of the Catholic Church 971, 2097, 2132
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Free to post on your own channels under CC BY-SA 4.0: keep the credit line and the AI disclosure. Suggested caption:
Do Catholics worship Mary? The Catechism answers in writing: no. Here is the difference between adoration and honour.
On-screen text: Catechism 971: "differs essentially from the adoration" · Catechism 2097: adoration is for God alone · Luke 1:28, 1:42 · Luke 1:48: "all generations shall call me blessed"