Question:
Answer:
The question assumes that bowing before something or someone necessarily involves worship. But this is not true.
For example, Solomon didn’t offer worship to his mother when he bowed before her in 1 Kings 2:19. It was simply a gesture of honor, since Bathsheba was the queen mother. Isaac wasn’t prophesying that the nations would worship his son Jacob when he said, “Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you” (Gen. 27:29). He was merely indicating that the nations would honor Jacob and his descendants.
Moreover, the act of bowing can’t be idolatrous in and of itself, because God commands that it be directed to finite beings. For example, in Revelation 3:9 Jesus says that he will make “those of the synagogue of Satan” “bow down” before the feet of the Christians in Philadelphia. If bowing before another were an act of worship, then Jesus would be commanding idolatry. But that’s absurd.
It’s possible that someone who bows before a statue of Mary might offer the statue, or Mary herself, worship. But the idolatry would not be due to the act of bowing. It would be due to the intentional offering of worship; like in the case of Cornelius who bowed before Peter and worshipped him (Acts 10:25-26). If a Catholic were to do such a thing, they would need to repent and begin offering worship to the one who alone has a right to our worship—namely, God.