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So you cannot answer “yes” you just spew examples that you know - if you actually were Catholic and taught as a Catholic is taught - are NOT examples of Godhood. Right?

Sixteen years of Catechism?

Twenty years in the Catholic Church including serving as a Lectern at the Altar?

Narses, you really presume too much.

Were you ever taught that Mary was God or even god? Were you ever taught that she was divine? Were you ever taught that she was due worship or taught to worship her?

Simple yes or no answers

This sort of question doesn't lend itself to simple yes or no answers. What is a god? It can be as blatant as Ashteroth, Queen of Heaven. It can be as subtle as wanting a nice car, too much. I don't think you'll ever get a black and white answer because technically, from what I've seen of it, the formal teaching stops short of identifying Mary with the essence of the divine being. So if you're looking for that, so you can deny it, don't hold your breath.

But that doesn't mean there isn't a problem.

I was never a Catholic. All I had to work with were Catholics I knew personally. I have Catholic relatives who, IMHO, do cross that line, who have elevated Mary to the status of divine being, co-redemptrix, truly coequal with Christ in the redemptive process. They appear to have arrived at this based on their feminist distrust of the inherent patriarchy (Father-rule) of the Trinity, synthesized with the power of the false-ish "Mother of God" syllogism to further confuse matters.

Yes, I know that the "Mother of God" formula does not technically express deity for Mary in the sense of being very God. Theotokos is better understood as God-bearer, or as one person puts it, Mary was the mother of the one who was always God. Not so good as sound-bite theology, but it does a slightly better job of avoiding the category confusion of the oversimplified "Mother of God" formulation. But it still leaves a lot of important details unstated.

But my relatives, AFAIK, never heard of Theotokos, or Chalcedon, or Nestorius, etc. Without that intensive background, when you say "Mother of God," you trigger biological models of understanding based on practical human experience. "Mother" is the First Cause of the child. If the child has the essence of absolute deity, "Mother" becomes First Cause even to that. Yes, I know the councils and the teaching don't say that. The focus at Chalcedon was preserving the seamless, hypostatic union of both human and divine natures in Christ, despite having acquired His human nature by birth to Mary. And yes, I am aware there are debates even about the exact timing and origin of His human nature (preexistence of souls question etc.).

But my relatives don't process any of that. They look at you funny if you don't get that, because she is God's Mother, she deserves similar respect, which we evangelicals would characterize as idolatry, when directed at Mary. This is a difficult to avoid side-effect of the expression "Mother of God," as it plays out in the minds of rank-and-file Catholics, such that no amount of improvement in catechism can rectify the impulse to ontological errors, because they are forced on the mind by the language itself.

Add to that mix all the activities associated with Marian devotion, not to mention using some of those grandiose titles associated with well-known false deities, and you end up sending a message that unmistakably conveys "god" if not "God" to many an honest mind, though the formal teaching may try to come artfully short of such a declaration. But having a pope actually call her Queen of Heaven? Is not the queen coequal regent with the king? And if equal in rank, under monotheistic principles, how do we see her as not some way entangled with the Trinity as a peer? But the formal teaching doesn't say it is so. We just have Pope Pius XII sending a message via labeling that is nigh impossible to read any other way:

From the earliest ages of the catholic church a Christian people, whether in time of triumph or more especially in time of crisis, has addressed prayers of petition and hymns of praise and veneration to the Queen of Heaven. And never has that hope wavered which they placed in the Mother of the Divine King, Jesus Christ; nor has that faith ever failed by which we are taught that Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, reigns with a mother's solicitude over the entire world, just as she is crowned in heavenly blessedness with the glory of a Queen.

See: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_11101954_ad-caeli-reginam_en.html

It's like common law marriage. There doesn't have to be a piece of paper saying its official for it to be real. All you need are the elements. The evangelical heart cannot give prayer or hymns of praise or titles of heavenly monarchy to any but God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and no one else. He will not give His glory to another. So we won't either, either formally, or materially.

Peace,

SR