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Mr. Jack:

That's very good. Seriously. So, to disagree, I have to go after one of the premises.

I will go after both.

Here's my attempt, with comments.

The first comment is that we are talking about a miraculous motherhood which is part of the miracle and mystery of the Incarnation.

A feature of this miracle is that the eternal and antecedent God enters time. Not only does Mary "precede" Jesus (the Incarnate God), but so do Joseph, Ezra, David, Moses, Abraham, Noah, Adam, and a bunch of animals, birds and fishies.

Jesus' birthday may not have been 12/25/01, but he was born on some particular date "late in time" and was conceived before that -- which we Catholics will celebrate this Friday with much joy and with breaking the Lenten fast and Friday abstinence. (I'm going to have a BEER! Yeah!)

Yet Paul says of Him "He is before all things," and "..in Him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell." (Col 1: 17 & 19)

So we have a special case of motherhood. So maybe we need to look at what we think a mother is (as distinct from "mothah", which is another thing all together.-- I include this remark as an attempt at scholarly completeness.)

Well, "tokos" means at it's root "birther" (Nothing to do with Obama.) Similarly in the title Deipara the "para"has the same meaning and lingers on as the stem of "parturition."

Now,a "birther" is also a gestator (gestatrix?). That is,in viviparous animals usually the birther also supplies through sort of ad hoc organs protection and nutrition for the offspring. So thus far we have "mother" means the one who gestates and who gives birth.

Now WHAT does she gestate? She gestates, I think, a creature that vast proportion of whose stuff, matter, comes from her (or, strictly speaking, from God through her.) Also coming from her is PART (only part -- NOT all) of the still incompletely understood chemical information which determines physical characteristics.

That is in every vivaparous creature in which there are also distinct sexes, the mother gestates and conceives a child the vanishingly small portion of whose matter does NOT come through her and a significant portion of whose characteristics do not come through her, including the determinant of the sex of the child.

So Mary gestated something most of whose matter came through her and some of whose characteristics came from her. And she brought it to birth.

That's what mothers do; that's what Mary did. Mary sure looks like the mother of whatever it is that Jesus us.

Now, I am older than my wife. We have a child. Approximately half of the characteristics of that child come from me. SO my wife is the mother of something PART of which (or some aspects of which) preceded her.

By all this, I do not think that Mary or the concept of motherhood is changed by the titles Theotokos, Deipara, or "Mother of God."

What is changed is what it is possible for a creature to be. ONE creature is also the Creator.

As my daughter's brow and chin predated her mother, so our Lord's divinity preceded Mary. But my wife is no less my daughter's mother for that precedence, and Mary is no less God's mother -- For, as already quoted, "... in him all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell."

How's that?