So your answer is, "Dawg can't but Quix can? I know better than you what you think?" Where is the Scripture that unequivocally gives "Quix," for the answer to the question "Who can know it?"
You have not been able to adduce here ONE SINGLE piece of CONCLUSIVE evidence. Not ONE. It's all impressionistic and circular. As in the naming of Churches: IF we worship Mary, then our naming of Churches proves it? But if we don't, it doesn't. That's not evidence that's bigotry plain and simple, that's assuming what you want to prove.
No, You make it sound like, after demonstrating for a long time that you have no clue what we believe -- what hyperdulia feels like from the inside -- and how different it feels from worship, that you know we don't believe it.
You say I am saying none of us has a blind spot, (which clearly I am not saying or implying) but the reality is you are saying we're all, all us RCs and Eo's as blind as bats, but that you know the thoughts of all of us.
And you never answered the "disproportion in responsibility for error" argument. You remember? We see forty-eleven gazillion different Protestant denominations. SOMEBODY erred. In the 25 years I've lived here the local Baptist church has spawned two offspring that disagree with it on doctrine or piety. So SOMEBODY's got to be wrong. Why is that not the fault of the Baptists, if errors among RC are the responsibility of our teaching?
If, perchance, you are finally able to adduce someone who truly and frankly worships Mary, that will be my fault or the RC Church's fault?
Don't you see how you are unwittingly (see, if you know what I'm doing, can I know what you're doing?) testifying to a higher expectation of righteousness from us than from the Protestants? People a are alwyas disparaging us for not living up to a standard they quite holding themselves to long ago. The poor Prots can't be held responsible for the error, heresy, or apostasy which spring up among their people all the time (how many different kinds of Episcopalian are there? how many Campbellites?), but the EO's and RC are responsible for ALL of theirs?
If we start from assuming that we worship Mary and are wrong about nearly everything, then your arguments hold together. But they do not prove one single thing. And yet when Catholics gather, we can count on Protestants gathering to defame, mock (in tecnnicolor) and slander us.
IF it's for our own good, then let's look at the fruits, okay? How many converts have come from calling us liars? How many from colored 48 point fonts? If FRUITS are the standard, lets see some benefit from gathering around and abusing those who disagree with you? This starts out as a thread about a movie but by post 9 we are being told by TOM SMEDLEY that we make Mary a goddess. All done in love of course. Except, as I say, the fruit is not only tin on the ground but it was precisely this unreasoning gratuitous hatred (remember - if you can see my heart, how can you deny that I can see yours? - not you personally, I hasten to add) that led me to re-evaluate the RC Church. A fruit, in other words, of all this "love" was to encourage me to become a Catholic. Is that the fruit you all are working for with the mockery, abuse, and slander How is that working for you?
And how well do you think either camp is doing on the whole evangelism thing? We would have been content to wring our hands over perceived insults to our Lady, but you all came thundering in and started a bar-fight. And now you're complaining because we hit back.
Well I gotta go worship Isis or Diana of the Ephesians or whoever.
