[Campion]

If you've ever engaged in a prolonged conversation with a Mormon, you've been introduced to an alternate spiritual universe, one wherein a self-aware spiritual entity other than the God of the Bible hears prayers, answers them, provides vivid dreams and revelations, and endlessly exhorts to decent living.

"Other than" or "separate from"?

Mary is not God, but she is also not "separate from God", because the blessed in heaven are perfectly, intimately, united to his will and his nature in all things. Heaven is all about not being separate from God, that's what makes it "heaven".

No sane Catholic would ever suggest that Mary does any of the things you describe separate from the power and will of God.

Now if you're talking about self-aware spiritual entities separate from God who do the things you describe, that's a problem.

[PetroniusMaximus]

" No sane Catholic would ever suggest that Mary does any of the things you describe separate from the power and will of God."

Many of the statements I've read here and on other Catholic info sites leave me with the impression that Catholics view Mary as some sort of demigoddess.

[TomSmedley]

Mary is not God, but she is also not "separate from God", because the blessed in heaven are perfectly, intimately, united to his will and his nature in all things. Heaven is all about not being separate from God, that's what makes it "heaven".

Well, the idea of "union" with God is Hindu. The Christian ideal, as I understand it, is COMMUNION with God. We retain our own nature and personality, even as we commune with God.

Considering how transcendent God is, the gap between Him and Mary is far vaster than the gap between Mary the mother of Jesus and my late sister Mary. Two human saints rejoicing before the throne in God's glory and one another's companionship. Any attempt to give one dead human some kind of heavenly status over another dead human, as far as us living humans are concerned, impresses me as idol-making.