No — and the charge rests on a misreading of the very verse it quotes. The older “vain repetitions” wording can mislead; the Douay renders Christ’s words plainly: “when you are praying, speak not much, as the heathens. For they think that in their much speaking they may be heard” (Matthew 6:7). The Greek He used describes pagan babbling — heaping up words and divine names to wear a god down, as if prayer were a magic word-count. What He condemns is mindless, mercenary speech, not repeated prayer.

We know that for certain from what Jesus does next. In the very next breath He hands the disciples a set form to pray — the Our Father (Matthew 6:9). And on the night before He died, in agony, He “prayed the third time, saying the selfsame word” (Matthew 26:44). The same Lord who warned against heathen babbling repeated an identical prayer three times over. Repetition itself, then, cannot be what He forbade.

Scripture is in fact full of holy repetition. Around the throne of God the living creatures “rested not day and night, saying: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty” (Revelation 4:8) — the worship of Heaven is ceaseless repetition. Psalm 135 repeats the refrain “for his mercy endureth for ever” in all twenty-six of its verses. If repeating words emptied prayer of meaning, God would not have written His own hymnbook that way.

That is what the Rosary actually is: not a word-counting machine, but a sustained meditation on the life of Christ, with the repeated Hail Mary2 — itself woven from Scripture (Luke 1:28, 42) — as the gentle rhythm beneath it, the way a heartbeat underlies thought. The familiar words occupy the lips so the mind can dwell on the mysteries: the Annunciation, the Cross, the empty tomb.1 The honest distinction is simple. Vain repetition is repetition without love or attention; faithful repetition is the language of love, which never tires of saying the same true thing. We ask Our Lady to pray for us again and again for the same reason a child says “I love you” more than once.