[kosta50]

Do you honestly think an average member of your Church really understands that? Saying that she is the cause of all blessings is different from saying that all blessings were made possible through her bearing God as a Man. This kind of language does not favor serious involvement of laity in ecclesiastical issues.

[Agrarian]

Goodness, Kosta, the Orthdox services are positively chock-full of that kind of language, and not just about the Theotokos, but of all the saints. One can choose to take them the wrong way, but only if one is a Sola Scriptura Protestant. And to scrub our services to make them unoffensive to Sola Scriptura Protestants would require something far more radical than Vatican II.

Consider the feast for tomorrow, of the Martyr Aquilina. I went straight to the first troparion of the first Ode of her canon, written in the 800's by St. Joseph the hymnographer. It is as follows:

Thou, O all-glorious one,
dost truly stand in the heavens before Christ, thy Bridegroom.
Wherefore, by thy supplications, O honored one,
do thou glorify those on earth who piously glorify thee,
and with thee make them partakers of glory who chant:
For gloriously is He glorified!

You ask if our average parishioner would understand this hymn correctly. I most absolutely do. Our parishioners are constantly attending the services of the Church. They love them: cradle and convert alike.

It frankly is impossible to regularly attend the services, hear the hymns and prayers in their full context, and come away with the idea that the Theotokos and the other saints are being worshipped and put on a level with God.

I seriously doubt that our churches would be filling with converts from conservative Protestantism if they believed that the Orthodox Church was saying by this hymn that St. Aquilina is "all-glorious" in the sense that she is as glorious as God, that she personally "glorifies us on earth" by her own power, and that she personally "makes us partakers in glory."

And as to the cradle Orthodox -- well, we converts learned our understanding of these things from them... I think that the most simple Russian or Greek peasant hearing the words of these hymns knew that Jesus is God and the Theotokos isn't, and interpreted the hymns in that light, just as we do today.

There have been a few converts, particularly some of the early Evangelical Orthodox, who wanted to change the ancient language of the Church in this regard to make it more acceptable to Protestant ears, but fortunately, they have been roundly ignored.