It is amazing the lengths to which the maternity of Mary is denied.
You say “Mary was the mother to Jesus’ human body which contained Jesus’ soul and spirit...She was not the mother of his divinity...”
Do you really want to go there? That God was not the soul or spirit of Jesus? How did that work, then? What part of Jesus was His divinity?
You say “If Mary was the mother of God, that would make her God’s mother...And that is flat out ridiculous ... God’s divinity wasn’t even manifest in Jesus til he was 30 years old...”
You may consider it ridiculous to consider Mary as God’s mother, but it is what Scripture tells us. While Jesus did not display His divinity until He was 30, He was made divine at His conception. This was made known to Joseph in Matthew 1:20 when the angel of the Lord told him that is was through the Holy Spirit that the child was conceived in Mary. It was also made known to Mary in Luke 1:31, 35 when the angel Gabriel told her that she will conceive and bear a son who will be called Son of the Most High, and this will come to be by the holy Spirit coming upon her, and the power of the Most High will overshadowing her.
You say “Other than recognizing that Mary was blessed because God chose her to be the mother of Jesus there’s not a single thing in the scriptures that leads us to believe that Mary had any role in the ministry of Jesus other than providing a body for Jesus to grow in and be born from...”
It is true that Mary’s role was to provide a body for Jesus to grow in and be born from. This is exactly what makes a woman a mother, giving birth to a child. And given that the child that was born of Mary was divine at her conception, that makes Mary the mother of the child that was born to her in His humanity and in His divinity.
You say “You guys have turned Mary into a goddess which is proven by all the statues you have made of her...You make ‘altars’ to this goddess and place her statues on top of the altars and bow down and worship (pray to) her...”
I won’t argue this point. While some of your disagreements are based on misperceptions, I respect that you guys have some beliefs that differ from Catholic teaching.
You say “Mary is not God’s mother...”
Scripture clearly shows us that the child that Mary conceived and brought into the world was God. This alone makes Mary the mother of God. Not that she had any other role in the ministry of Jesus, just “providing the body for Jesus to grow in and be born from...”
The angel did not tell Joseph “don’t go calling Mary the mother of God.” Gabriel did not tell Mary, “don’t go thinking of yourself as the mother of God. I have not seen anything in Scripture that says we are not to call Mary the mother of God. Have you?
No it doesn't...And that elevates Mary way, way, way, above that which was written about...
Not that she had any other role in the ministry of Jesus, just “providing the body for Jesus to grow in and be born from...”
Yah, right...Because of that false claim that Mary is God's mother your religion has churches named after her, altars and statues made of her and you worship her by praying to her...You have elevated the mother of Jesus above God...
God's purpose was to take on the form of a human to learn and understand the temptations we go thru and to overcome those temptations...To draw people to him and become the Jewish Messiah...
Never was it intended that attention would be given to and magnified in the woman who carried him around for 9 months as your religion has done...
Mary had nothing to do with the 'divine' arriving in her body...It was placed there by God...It was placed there by God and put into a human fetus/Jesus...
Just as with us, the physical body of Jesus was just a shell for Jesus to live in...
The 'Mary' that Catholics bow down to is foreign to the scriptures...That is not the mother of Jesus portrayed in the bible...It is some other female entity that sits on a throne above God...