You’re Roman Catholic and have a private practice of saying the rosary? Great. But be certain to go to Mass, too.

You’ve become a student of the Virgin Mary’s messages to the faithful? Just be sure they accord with the Gospel.

On the other hand, are you one of those who spurn all “private devotions” — novenas, stations of the cross, pilgrimages, daily Angelus prayers, saints-day processions, veneration of relics, and the vastly popular rosary — as old-fashioned, even retrograde? Think again, because they “can help bring God into our everyday lives.”

That is the U.S. bishops speaking.

Earlier this month in Washington, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted guidelines that point to “healthy devotional practices,” while also stressing that the popular pieties should never supplant the Eucharist, Scripture and the worship of Christ.

Though many Catholics of “the Vatican II generation” reject devotions as “superstitious and useless,” surveys find that younger Catholics are drawn to the traditions, said the Rev. James Martin, editor of “Awake My Soul, a forthcoming book on the topic.

Devotions are “very slippery,” Martin said in an interview, because they tend to be “unregulated,” individualized and infused with emotions.

The bishops’ committee on doctrine issued the broad guidelines largely to counter “a proliferation of devotional materials” from various Catholic groups that has led to “excesses,” said Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie, Pa., the committee chairman.

A prime concern, Trautman said in an interview, was “an overexaggeration on private revelation that is not related to the liturgy.”

The church extols “public revelation” — the teachings of Jesus and His apostles — as superior to any private messages “which God has given to a particular individual or group and which place no obligation” on other Catholics, the bishops’ guidelines say.