My point was not to try to discuss the whole of Catholic theology. My point was to show the devotion to Mary as opposed to the devotion to Jesus. Period.
I think the problem is that, sure from one aspect, God does NOT ask permission. and He doesn't get caught by surprise either. But from another aspect He does seem at least to engage in a dance where HE does this and then WE (by His grace) do THAT and so there is something very like asking permission.
The whole darn thing seems to paranoid to me. It's like nobody gets any "credit" for doing anything good, but if they do something bad then there's plenty of blame. There's even plenty of blame if somebody misunderstands something they did which was good in itself. If somebody comes to Jesus, no merit or any semblance of merit accrues to the people who nurtured and guided and sometimes just about carried him there. But if somebody takes "Mother of God" God the wrong way, it's our fault?
it seems, if anything, the fault would be in the person taking things the wrong way. I've been a monotheist for, well, quite a while. It never occurred to me that saying "Mother of God" meant that Mary was the REAL god, and that Trinity stuff was just a parvenu. From the time I was 19 with no instruction I knoew that the "middle term" was "Jesus, who is God".
I started praying the Rosary off and on, in 1967. I think, IN A WAY, I can say that Mary saved my life. I know perfectly well that Jesus is Kyrios and that God is God and the rest of it. There has never been any question in my mind OR any emotional displacement of God by Mary. But still there is this ineffable relationship.
The boss-lady and I sort of blend our Rosary with our daily and occasional intercessions, and there is no "hiccup" in going from "We pray to the Lord" "Lord hear our prayer" after one of us gives a whole telephone book full of the people we're praying for.
So despite what you see in stores and what cook's aunt's neighbor's daughter might have done about mariolatry, on the ground, here among people who practice right smart Marian devotion, it's just not happening as feared. There are now 20 mysteries of the Rosary. Mary gets 8 of them, in the sense that she is explicitly mentioned (or, at least, broadly hinted at) in 7 of them and in one, the Wedding Feast at Cana, she is, as it were, clearly implied. Jesus is explicitly stated in all but 4, and of those 4 2 are the Annunciation and the Visitation and 2 are the Assumption and the Coronation, which if I may say so, imply the heck out of Jesus.
It's just a non-starter. The only people I KNOW of who have a beef with the term are people who came into the conversation not only with a beef against the Catholic Church but with a firm resolve NOT to believe that Church's account of itself without a (sometimes nasty) fight. It was never easy to think this possible misunderstanding was our problem or our fault and it's getting harder and harder.
You know there are some people on this thread who, if they got a notarized letter from God saying, "Surprise, the papists are right!" would take a VERY long time and much heartache to come around.
This is like what Rush says about Democrats advising Republicans how to be better Republicans. A lot of us have taken the objection seriously and looked at it from all sides. At this point after 7500 posts on this thread alone, it's going to take more than a sampling of one store -- a sampling which evidently didn't count crucifixes as images of Jesus (or note that nearly every rosary has an image of Our Lord which is usually larger than the image of our Lady) to get me to think that there is a plague of mother worship sweeping the land.
Growf!
You still compare apples and oranges. We don't eat Mary on Sunday.