Another time I offered a conjecture about people vying for extravagance in praise and making witty expressions of devotion as if challenging their companions to say, "You can't say THAT!" and then coming up with some tendentious and outrageous explanation which pulled the extravagance back within the bounds of orthodoxy.
But it was when somebody else quoted somebody like deMontfort saying as clearly as could be that in every respect mary is secondary and derivative and blah blah, and the response from the other side was, in essence, "He's just saying that. He doesn't mean it."
That pretty much sealed the deal for me. When the words of an author are dismissed because they run counter to the accusation, when the evidence which disproves the charge is thrown out BECAUSE it disproves the charge, then there's no more point in arguing.
But there certainly are a lot of excessive statements about Mary from some Catholics.
This "veneration has continued through the reign of "TOTUS TUUS" Pope John Paul II who considered De Montfort's True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin at least one of the most important books he has ever read and gave due credit in his encyclical "Rosarium Virginis Mariae".
What do you expect?
You mean like this?
And with them eke, O Goddesse heavenly bright,
Mirrour of grace and Majestie divine,
Great Lady of the greatest Isle, whose light
Like Phoebus lampe throughout the world doth shine,
Shed thy faire beames into my feeble eyne,
And raise my thoughts, too humble and too vile,
To thinke of that true glorious type of thine,
The argument of mine afflicted stile:
The which to heare, vouchsafe, O dearest dred [object of reverence], a-while.
Oh, wait -- that's by a Protestant to Queen Elizabeth I!