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I guess the first thing to say is that "circularity" doesn't seem to be as bad as people say. I mean that, in my alleged thinking, each part supports (or ought to) support every other part. So my remark isn't the put-down it might appear to be.

Except that if we're going to go after each other's way of thinking, then I think we have to try to the (1) establish agreed upon premises;(2) ask,"how in the name of, um, Torquemada do you get where you are from those principles we agreed on?"

At least that's what I think. but then, I haven't finished my first cup of coffee yet ...

Okay
If He thought Enoch and Elijah important enough to mention, why would He not have mentioned Mary....?

Here's how I see it:

IF we assume Sola Scriptura as a "driving principle" and then, as a lesser principle, that Councils can err, and "the Church" is 'invisible' and not to be identified with any identifiable corporate group, and so forth,
THEN it is consistent with that view that the Marian dogma (and a bunch o' other stuff) cannot be relied upon to be true.

IF you're right about Bible, Church, so-called "sacred Tradition", THEN your position on Mary follows, and the sub-argument that if her assumption were all that, it wold have been clearly presented in Scripture also follows.

Am I okay so far?

Now, on the other hand, if we are right (swallow hard, you can pretend for a minute ...)
If the Holy Spirit does work with the slop-buckets of humans,
If the Scriptures and "sacred tradition" emerge together, each clarifying and correcting¹ the other,
If "the Church" CAN be identified in some way (and that hedging phrase is important to us) with some particular collection of earthen vessels,
if the Lord's saying about the (then) future coming of the Holy Ghost revealing all things, and so forth,
THEN it is utterly unremarkable that the history of the Church after Pentecost would include the development (unfolding) of dogma, including Marian teachings.

Your arguments reinforce your position, but do not touch mine; my arguments ditto, mutatis mutandis. Some of our conclusions, are absurd in the light of some of your premises, and some of yours ... with ours. But we don't make contact. That's what I'm trying to say. Is that anything less than utterly obscure?

In related news, yesterday at chapter (the monthly meeting of our coven of Lay Dominicans) during "Formation"(the edumicational part of the meeting) we started going off on how wrong the Protestants are about how to read Scripture. That sort of thing always makes me squirm in my seat. Personally I've learned a lot from Protestantism, it was in Protestantism that I came to Jesus (or,more accurately, He came to me), and I find it more useful to talk about how wrong I am and about how and in what respects my "opponent" is right. I fear a kind of dangerous self-hypnosis in talking about how very wonderful I and my opinions are.

Both our 'sides" include wonderful, smart, devout people. (And then there's Quix ....) :-) And God has touched and changed our lives. It simply cannot be under a gracious Lord who mourns at our divisions that we cannot learn from one another.

I wanted yesterday to say,"Brothers and Sisters in Jesus and Dominic: Our Lord is Victor, our faith is rich and strong. Are we not secure enough then to settle down and see what we can learn from our Protestant brethren?

And I noticed a 'kink' in communication, thus: We were talking about the phrase "economy of salvation," and I asked if the phrase "the work of Christ" showed up in Catholic thought.

Immediately one of my friends 'went off' on how it's perilous to try to re-invent terms and how the phrase "the work of Christ" was at once more vague and less satisfactory than "economy of Salvation."

He assumed I was proposing it as a synonym. He assumed. Evidently there was a kind of tenderness or fearfulness that pricked him to shut out an opposing thought before he looked at it and took the usual scholarly steps of FIRST understanding and then (if appropriate) stomping all over ...

If our trust in the Lord is so weak that we cannot listen to one another without getting all prickly (I condemn myself here) then we need to turn to Jesus and ask for more.

In the last century a Catholic sister and visionary advised -- and it's good advice -- that we learn to pray,"Jesus, I trust in you." It's especially helpful wwen nothing seems to be breaking our way.

But it's also helpful to me when I converse with "poison-handling, snake-drinking" Pentecostalists or with dispensationalists,such as your self. Clearly there is "a great gulf fixed" between us. But the light of Christ is pretty small beer if it cannot shine across that gulf and illuminate some of the good features on either side.

Anyway, that's what I think. Have an awesome Sunday!

(1) By suggesting that tradition "corrects" Scripture, I only mean in the sense of saying, e.g.: The Epistle of Hermas is OUT,Revelation is IN.