I don't. I was illustrating the absurd with the absurd.
Why would catholics worship or venerate Mary when the Bible says we are to have no other gods? We have zero record in the New Testament of anyone ever praying to Mary. Nor do we have any commands to pray to Mary in the NT.
When Jesus taught His disciples to pray He taught them the Lord's prayer. If Mary was so special, why didn't He instruct them on a prayer involving her? It's not like Jesus never spoke on future things.
Some definitions before we go on:
adoration: strong feelings of love or admiration
venerate: to regard with reverential respect or with admiring deference
worship: reverence offered a divine being or supernatural power; an act of expressing such reverence; extravagant respect or admiration for or devotion to an object of esteem
The devotion to Mary by the RCC could fit any one of these three definitions. The RCC can play word games all it wants to if it helps them to feel they aren't practicing idolatry.
The Saints are venerated as they have always been in the Church. It is not Adoration which is for God. Veneration is honoring those saints who have given heroic witness to the Faith, many of them, particularly in the early Church were Martyred. The earliest example can be found around 150 AD when Saint Polycarp was martyred and those believers who were under his care [He was Bishop of Smyrna] marked the cite of his martyrdom and they gathered to pray and remember Polycarp’s heroic witness to the Faith and willingness to not reject CHrist even as the Roman authorities were burning him. Polycarp was a pupil of Saint John the Apostle. Those early Christians venerated Saint Polycarp given he was a Saint and Martyr. They did not worship him. You choose to try to fit your protestant notions on Catholic and Orthodox as well, understanding of the COmmunion of saints. Rather than keep spouting your nonsens, maybe you should read exactly what the Communion of saints entails and what veneration and honoring saints means.
Why wouldn't Stephen be considered one of the first martyrs...or possibly John the Baptist? I would say they were around a bit before Polycarp. See the Bible has the answers....always has...always will.
When one practices what the RCC does one gets this kind of false teaching regarding Mary: From the Glories of Mary.
As the mother, then, must have the same power as the Son, justly was Mary made omnipotent by Jesus, who is omnipotent; it being, however, al ways true, that whereas the Son is omnipotent by nature, the mother is so by grace. And her omnipotence consists in this, that the Son denies nothing that the mother asks; as it was revealed to St. Bridget, who heard Jesus one day addressing Mary in these words: Oh my mother, thou knowest bow I love thee; ask from me, then, whatever thou dost desire, for there is no demand of thine that will not be graciously heard by me." And the reason that he added was beautiful: "Mother, when thou wast on earth, there was nothing thou didst refuse to do for love of me; now that I am in heaven, it is just that I refuse nothing which thou dost ask of me. Mary is, then, called omnipotent in the sense in which it can be understood of a creature, who is not capable of any divine attribute. She is omnipotent, because she obtains by her prayers whatever she wishes.
Again...no Biblical support for any of this.
No biblical evidence against it either. And again, I know what the Bible says about no other God. Mary is not God nobody ever claims that.
Catholic Theology is defined in Latin and it sharply distinguishes the reverence accorded to the saints [dulia] from the worship and adoration that are due to God alone [Latria]. Translating those Latin terms into English does not always communicate the theological differences between “veneration of saints” and “adoration and worship due to God alone”. So, you can post all this stuff you want, makes no difference to me, Catholic theology, as well as Eastern Orthodox theology, clearly define what veneration is and what it is not and in no way is it “adoration and worship due to God”.
So no, it can’t fit into what you saying it can fit into because it is clearly defined as to what it is and has been for a long, long, long, time, well before the 16th century.