Catholic respect for Mary is dulia/hyperdulia, not latria - the latter of which is reserved for God alone.
Ligouri was writing at a time when Marian devotion was under attack. If you read his “Glories of Mary” thoroughly, it is abundantly clear that Mary is “only a pure creature” who “receives whatever she obtains as a pure favor from God.” Further, “Jesus... has supreme dominion over all, and also over Mary.”
Catholic dogma on Mary contains four elements: Divine Motherhood, Perpetual Virginity, Immaculate Conception and the Assumption.
“Catholic respect for Mary is dulia/hyperdulia, not latria - the latter of which is reserved for God alone.
Ligouri was writing at a time when Marian devotion was under attack. If you read his “Glories of Mary” thoroughly, it is abundantly clear that Mary is “only a pure creature” who “receives whatever she obtains as a pure favor from God.” Further, “Jesus... has supreme dominion over all, and also over Mary.”
Catholic dogma on Mary contains four elements: Divine Motherhood, Perpetual Virginity, Immaculate Conception and the Assumption.”
None of which is supported in the scripture. Thus the Catholic retort that they do not deify Mary is in vain. Because they deify her as something more than man, and give her all sorts of devotion and place her on the way to salvation as a mediatrix, which is really through Christ only, and then protest “But we don’t think she is GOD! Just the MOTHER OF God, all-Holy ever-virgin seat of wisdom perpetual virgin whose prayers can deliver us from DEATH.”
Either salvation is ALL of God, or it is NOT. The Romans cannot make up their mind and pretend they can have it both ways.
Do not try to minimize the amount of idolatry encouraged by the RCC. Marian devotion ought always to be under attack, because no such thing is taught by the Scriptures. Yet, Rome continues to push this kind of demonic veneration even with statues:
"A mysterious 'presence' of the transcendent Prototype seems as it were to be transferred to the sacred image...The devout contemplation of such an image thus appears as a real and concrete path of PURIFICATION of the soul of the believer...because the image itself, blessed by the priest...can in a certain sense, by analogy with the sacraments, ACTUALLY be a channel of divine grace." JPII.
Really? Channeling grace? Does this stuff not sound suspciously like idolatry? If not, someone's eyes are blinded. Wake up folks.