Why not go after real "spiritually hazardous" beliefs such as the one "church" where God is believed to have been a man before He "became" God, and where Father, Son and Holy Spirit are taught to be three different "gods," where Jesus is also a "brother" of Satan, who left additional "scriptures" on metal plates in Egyptian hieroglyphs in Pennsylvania, and we all become [real} Gods one day? We all know what "church" is that, don't we?
Or, why not be concerned about the ones who have the OT but reject Jesus Christ? After all is it more "spiritually hazardous" to be some sort of a Christian "even" Catholic and Orthodox (sarcasm) rather than a non-Christian?
And if Marian veneration is "idolatry" to you (Protestants), what is it to you? No one is forcing you to do the same!
Protestant preoccupation with Marian veneration is closer to bashing than to a concern. More importantly, it also misses the mark: like traffic cops being concerned with a car going 10 miles over the speed limit and letting bank robbers in the car next to it get away.
In other words, there are much more "spiritually hazardous" groups whose beliefs and practices should be the focus of Protestants' obessions than Marian devotion in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.
faulty Mariology = faulty Christology; functionally, logically yields Mary = Jesus
Tell me, show me, where is that ever explicitly or implicitly stated in any Catholic/Orthodox doctrine. It "exists" only in some Protestant minds. No Catholic/Orthodox will ever say that Mary is divine or equal to Christ!
And if our Christology is wrong (Two natures, one divine and one human, fused but not confused, in one Person), then not only the Catholics and the Orthodox, but all the mainline Protestants and Baptists are in Christological error as well.
So, we know the objections regarding Marian devotion. Thank you (Protestants) for bringing it to our attention. Since no one is forcing you to believe it, leave it at that and be cocnerned with your own (Protestant) issues such as why the Presbyterians use musical instruments when the original Prebsyterians strictly forbade them (traditions of men maybe)?
Is think your (Protestants) real cocnerns of "spiritual hazards" should be focused on those groups that deny Christ is God, or that He died, or that He had a (real) body, or who preach that Mary Magdalene was His "wife/lover" and had children with Him, or that He was not really a man, but only appeared as such, or that He is a lesser God than the Father, etc.
Those are serious Chritologically "hazardous concerns" and Mary doesn't even enter the picture.
There seems to be an assumption that I don’t comment on the other hazards when The Lord dumps them forcefully in my lap.
That’s an erroneous assumption.