“I don’t give a rip about what Luther has to say on Mary or any other subject.”
The Church of ME the Only One!
That's the response to another here having said that they;
Luther should be looked upon as authoritative, now?
Whatever happened to Luther having been some sort of [fill-in-the-blank with dealer's choice of favorite, typical Roman Catholic condemnation of Martin Luther]???
People are supposed to respectfully consider what is being presented here as having been the man's thinking (which is somewhat dubious assumption, in and of itself, considering the polemical nature of the source) in regards to this particular subject matter ---but not at all in other things, is it? Because it's Martin Luther he simply must be attacked-attacked-ATTACKED except when he may have had things to say supportive of how 'cult of Mary' devotees tend to hyperventilate (figuratively speaking, of course) when doing the hyperdulia in service to "Her"? That's what I'm seeing here.
Was that sort of thing (the "in service to Her" link provided immediately above) which showcases "Mary" presenting herself as a co-redeemer that persons were advised they should "serve" with prayer directed to her (instead of relying upon, praying to, worshiping and serving the Creator) what Christ and his chosen apostles had in mind when establishing the Church? If so, they seemed to have never gotten around to mentioning it. In fact (in the Scriptures) they tended consistently to do rather the opposite.
The relatively early in history of the Church, Gnostic-like beginnings of Marianism did not gain much more than a toe-hold until the 4th, and 5th centuries, expanding from there on to transpose attributes of Christ onto "Mary" more fully only centuries long after the original cast and crew of apostles, and 1st generation acolytes succeeding them had passed on.
From within point #5 at Why Mary? at Patheos.com, written by Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History, Baylor University;
"... In devotional practice, Mary for well over a thousand years became the second Christ, a co-Christ. If the church officially drew a strict distinction between the worship due to Christ and the veneration due his Mother, that division collapsed in practice."
Jenkins is not all that much 'anti-Catholic', which can be determined from investigating the man's other writings, for example this from 2002, the article subheading reading; The trauma stemming from the Boston case should not be used to accuse the whole Roman Catholic Church and his own personal history. I mention this because he seems to be even-handed in his approaches to information as he finds it. Interestingly enough, at the end of the first article that I'd linked to, at Patheos.com, he ended that article posing this question, which I think is an interesting one: "So at what point did “tradition” cease to be valid as a source for doctrine?"
Perhaps "tradition" was never all that good of an actually reliable source for doctrine, it having been a decidedly mixed bag all along. Similar to how "ecclesiastical writings" in comparison to more actually fully canonical texts ---although a few of those "ecclesiastical writings" fit to be read from (in practice, generally in limited extract) within Church, were described (and provided warnings regarding) by St. Jerome in BEGINNING OF THE PROLOGUE OF JEROME TO THE BOOKS OF SOLOMON regarding Sirach, Wisdom (of Solomon), Ecclesiasticus, "... Judith, Tobias, and the Maccabees, but does not receive them among the canonical Scriptures, so also one may read these two scrolls for the strengthening of the people, (but) not for confirming the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas".[underlining added]
What if I told you that I don't give a rip about what the likes of Dave Armstrong has to say? Would that make me into being;
He's a lesser figure than Martin Luther was.
That goon (Armstrong) is the kind of RC apologist who would argue that the books Jerome clearly enough set outside the canon had been accepted as fully canonical pretty much all along despite there being abundant evidence to the contrary.
Dave Armstrong's arguments are rather worthless, their only utility presented to myself being example of RC polemical apologetic to be examined in detail in order to show the holes in it. For this article, well, there's more than one way to skin the beasty little critters. I've seen his work before. It's often the same ol' same ol' misrepresentation of actual fact and historical record -- that studiously ignores anything that would detract from the polemic. Should I expect much of anything different for this article?
In other words, the man lacks intellectual integrity when it comes to needing justify to others particular tenets of belief, faith and practice, relatively peculiar chiefly to Roman Catholicism. The various flavors of Orthodox do have their differences in regard to how they go about praising the Theotokos, with yet more significant difference with the Latin Church in how she is presented within Orthodox theology.
I can say all of those things honestly enough without being "The Church of ME the Only One!" as you had so rudely posted as something of personal commentary/insult reply to metmom.