That's all fine. I've never said anything against how the term is used among adherents to it in your respective churches. My perspective has always only been in terms of how it sounds to those outside your churches.
The misunderstanding, if indeed there is such, arises exclusively from the abysmal, simplistic "common sense" teaching which, it seems, goes on in sola scriptura assemblies.
Blast that common sense! :)
I requested not to be pinged to this thread again. Please honor that request.
"That's all fine. I've never said anything against how the term is used among adherents to it in your respective churches. My perspective has always only been in terms of how it sounds to those outside your churches."
Ah, pay no attention to old Greeks when they are in pissy moods! :)
Thereafter, as you may remember, I mentioned that Marian veneration really isn't for people outside The Church. Funny thing that. One of our dearest friends at the parish is a woman who came into Orthodoxy several years ago with her husband from the Episcopal Church. She had been brought up sort of a generic Protestant and at about 40 they joined the Episcopalians. After a few years they say the apostasy of TEC and started coming to our study classes (COE). They were catechumens for over a year, mostly because she had such a problem with Marian veneration. Well, she decided to put that aside and "take the plunge" and get baptized and chrismated on Lazarus Saturday in Great Lent. She spent the next week, Great Week, in church for all the devotions. During the chanting of the Lamentation on Good Friday, she suddenly understood and since then has had, over many years, a profound devotion to the Theotokos.