And Catholics attest to a much much lower attendance at church/fellowship than do evangelicals, and to which class the the Mary of Scripture belongs to, versus the deceiving Mary of Catholicism .
Jesus' first disciple was his mother, who gave us the total account of his early life and who "treasured these things up in her heart". "A sword will pierce your own soul too, so that the secret thoughts of many hearts might be revealed".
While Catholic eisegesis is dependent upon egregious extrapolation for their unscriptural hyper-exaltation of the Mary of Catholicism, that is an awful lot to read into a verse that says nothing about Mary giving us the total account of Christ's early life, and which is not even a claim your church officially makes. And the Greek does not say "secret" while "that" is sometimes translated as "because," meaning a sword will pierce the heart or Mary revealing her thoughts, as it will for many others.
On the cross, he gave his mother to John to take in his home, but when you take your master's mother, she takes care of you.
John is known as "the disciple whom Jesus loved," not the "the disciple whom Mary loved," though I am sure she was a good mother to him, yet Catholics can only wish that Scripture says what they can only read into it.
Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, voices, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery.
Even the RC NAB Bible and The New Catholic Answer Bible commentary and certain other RC sources do not make the women of Rv. 12 to be Mary:
The woman adorned with the sun, the moon, and the stars (images taken from Genesis 37:9-10) symbolizes God's people in the Old and the New Testament. The Israel of old gave birth to the Messiah (Rev 12:5) and then became the new Israel, the church, which suffers persecution by the dragon (Rev 12:6, 13-17); cf Isaiah 50:1; 66:7; Jeremiah 50:12. This corresponds to a widespread myth throughout the ancient world that a goddess pregnant with a savior was pursued by a horrible monster; by miraculous intervention, she bore a son who then killed the monster. ; http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/. . P12V.HTM#$54O
Raymond Brown interprets Revelation 12 as, “The woman clothed with the sun, having the moon under her feet and on her head the crown of twelve stars, represents Israel, echoing the dream of Joseph in Gen. 37:9 where these symbols represent his father (Jacob/Israel), his mother, and his brothers (the sons of Jacob who were looked on as ancestors of the twelve tribes)” [Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), p.790].
Roman Catholic theologian Father Hubert J. Richards agrees that the Revelation 12 woman refers to Israel. In his book, “What The Spirit Says to the Churches: A Key to the Apocalypse of John,” (Nihil obstat and Imprimatur), Richards writes:
The vision proper, then, begins with the figure of a Woman clothed with the sun and the stars. We think naturally enough of our Lady, to whom this description has traditionally been applied. After all, we say, of whom else could John be thinking when he speaks of the mother of the Messiah? However it is clear from the rest of the chapter that this interpretation will stand only if the verse is isolated: what follows has very little relevance to our Lady. Nor is it any honor to Mary to apply any and every text to her without thought.
Who then is she? The source to which John has turned for his imagery throughout this book is the Old Testament. There, the Woman, the bride of God which brings forth the Messiah is Israel, the true Israel, the chosen people of God. It is quite certain that this is what is in John's mind when he begins his description with a quotation from Gen. 37:9-10 where the sun and the moon and the twelve stars represent the twelve-fold of Israel.
This Woman will later be contrasted with the Harlot (the collective personality of Rome, opposed to the true Israel) and will be specified at the end of the book, again appearing in the light and splendour for her marriage with the Lamb as the twelve-gated Jerusalem which forms the new Israel. In fact the number twelve occurs so frequently in the Apocalypse in reference to Israel that it cannot have a different meaning here. All the early fathers of the church interpreted these verses as about the Israel of God. - http://www.eternal-productions.org/PDFS/Revelation12Woman.pdf
..It is not until the fifth century (in Quodvultdeus) and the sixth century (in Oecumenius) that we find positive evidence for seeing, respectively, Mary as a secondary referent unintended by the author of the Revelation and Mary as the primary referent in the interpretation of this text. In any case, the Marian interpretation was never the majority opinion in the early church. The majority viewed the 'woman' as the people of God, both the ancient church and the New Covenant church." (Eric Svendsen, Who Is My Mother? [Amityville, New York: Calvary Press, 2001], pp. 231-232)
That Christ is the is the child who is to rule with an iron rod" is clear, but which does not make Mary to be the women, and the typology fits Israel. And he [Joseph] dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me. And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth? (Genesis 37:9,10)
The 12 stars on the woman’s head represents the 12 patriarchs, “and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.” (Rm. 9:5) And which was and will be persecuted, but God keeps her through it. And Israel is likened to being a women and mother:
For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands, saying, Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers. (Jeremiah 4:31)
Now why dost thou cry out aloud? is there no king in thee? is thy counsellor perished? for pangs have taken thee as a woman in travail. Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail: for now shalt thou go forth out of the city, and thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go even to Babylon; there shalt thou be delivered; there the Lord shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies. (Micah 4:9-10)
I have likened the daughter of Zion to a comely and delicate woman. (Jeremiah 6:2)
The women of Rv. 12 travailed (ōdinō: (cf. Gal. 4:19, 4:27) in birth and tormented (basanizō: cf. Mat. 8:6;Rev. 9:5; Rev. 20:10; Mat. 8:29; Mar. 5:7; Luk. 8:28; Mar. 6:48; Mat. 14:24; 2Pe. 2:8) to be delivered of her child, which was Christ, but which women cannot be the Mary of Rome, as it teaches that since she was sinless,
just as the rays of the sun penetrate without breaking or injuring in the least the solid substance of glass, so after a like but more exalted manner did Jesus Christ come forth from His mother's womb without injury to her maternal virginity...To Eve it was said: In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children. Mary was exempt from this law, for preserving her virginal integrity inviolate she brought forth Jesus the Son of God without experiencing, as we have already said, any sense of pain. - CATECHISM OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT PART 1: THE CREED; Article III. http://www.cin.org/users/james/ebooks/master/trent/tcreed03.htm
In the preface of the votive Mass in honor of Mary at the foot of the cross, we read the words: “She who had given Him birth without the pains of childbirth was to endure the greatest of pains in bringing forth to new life the family of the Church.” http://www.cst-phl.com/marian.html
“In conceiving you were all pure, in giving birth y ou were without pain.” (St. Augustine, Sermone de Nativitate )
Thus to take this as the women literally giving birth then you must contradict RC teaching that Mary had no anguish and pain of birth. In addition, no where is Mary said to uniquely be the mother of all Christians, but as said, Christ makes all such disciples
In addition, while the women can be seen to be Israel and thus consequently, the church, Rev. 7:4-8; cf. 14:1-4 also shows John's focus is on Israel, that of the remaining descendants of Abraham during the tribulation which turn to the Lord, whose coming the CCC teaches awaits his recognition by all Israel, whose acceptance means life from the dead, and that this full inclusion of the Jews will be in the wake of the full number of the Gentiles being saved.
Scripture clearly teaches that,
For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. (Romans 11:25-27)
Thus Rev. 7:14 speaks of a remnant of these in the tribulation period, and to which other prophecies relate:
And I will bring you out from the people, and will gather you out of the countries wherein ye are scattered, with a mighty hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with fury poured out. And I will bring you into the wilderness of the people, and there will I plead with you face to face. Like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt, so will I plead with you, saith the Lord God. And I will cause you to pass under the rod, and I will bring you into the bond of the covenant: (Ezekiel 20:34-37)
And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall bring you into the land of Israel, into the country for the which I lifted up mine hand to give it to your fathers. And there shall ye remember your ways, and all your doings, wherein ye have been defiled; and ye shall lothe yourselves in your own sight for all your evils that ye have committed. And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have wrought with you for my name's sake, not according to your wicked ways, nor according to your corrupt doings, O ye house of Israel, saith the Lord God. (Ezekiel 20:42-44)
The nations that persecute the remnant of Jews who turn to Christ are led by the devil, and which God protects by providing a place in the wilderness for 3.5 years, while in the end the Lord wuill destroy these persecuting peoples.
And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn. (Zechariah 12:9-10)
And even if we allowed this as a possible mention of Mary, it does not present the Mary of Catholicism, and it remains that there is only one manifest mention of her the inspired record of the NT church, (Acts 1) in stark contrast to her hyper exaltation and centrality in Catholic devotion, thinking of her far far above that which is written. (contra. 1 Co. 4:6)
She forms the body of Christ. She schools her son's disciples. Those who won't attend her school, remain ignorant.
Which is pure bombast, for to be a disciple of Christ is to be schooled in the Scriptures, which wholly inspired word the purported revelations of Mary are not part of, while Catholics are more ignorant of than evangelicals.
Our churches are now pro-gay and as soon as the civil authority authorizes child sex, they will be indistinguishable from the denizens of the town of Sodom: "Bring them out that we may know them".
And Rome manifestly considers even proabortion, prohomosexual public figures and their supporters to be members in life and in death, and thus they are your brethren. And thus besides the doctrinal errors, we should not leave our conservative Bible fellowships to become part of the most manifest deformation of the NT church.
For distinctive Catholic teachings are not manifest in the only wholly inspired substantive authoritative record of what the NT church believed (including how they understood the OT and gospels), which is Scripture, especially Acts thru Revelation.
Catholic Mary worship?
I guess this particular Mary scheme cuts back on the workload of the Holy Spirit!