Trajic,
"I'm trying to understand this apparent veneration of Mary to a station at least coequal with Christ."
If I find someone from a denomination that believes this I will send them your way.
Briguy,
"we non Catholics see Mary as invading on the one on one relationship we share with Jesus. We just can't imagine letting a third person in on that relationship. "
Sounds like a jealousy thing to me. We are the body of Christ. When another Christian on this loves Jesus and prays for you, is that invading your space also. When you get to heaven are you going to have this kind of animosity toward the Lord's mother? When a child is born in to my family does it decrease the love in the family? Does it decrease my love for my wife or should it make me jealous that the child loves her also? I am not even going to bother to answer the questions here because the quote above is so ridiculously petty and not of God.
On you BVM quote by Pope Leo XIII
I think a little context is in order. Let's post the whole thing:
"9. Since faith is the foundation, the source, of the gifts of God by which man is raised above the order of nature and is endowed with the dispositions requisite for life eternal, we are in justice bound to recognize the hidden influence of Mary in obtaining the gift of faith and its salutary cultivation-of Mary who brought the "author of faith"[Hebr. 12:1] into this world and who, because of her own great faith, was called "blessed." "O Virgin most holy, none abounds in the knowledge of God except through thee; none, O Mother of God, attains salvation except through thee; none receives a gift from the throne of mercy except through thee."[St. Germ. Constantinop., Orat. 11, in Dortnitione B.M.V.]"
Do you deny that Jesus came in to the world through the virgin Mary? Thus our salvaiton comes through her. Now you can speculate all you want that if she had said no, God would have simply had someone else do it. That she was just something he used for his purposes and cast aside. But the fact is that she was a special creation by him. forordained from all eternity to bear his Son. It is not idolatry to say our knowledge of him comes through her because he came to this world through her. OUr salvatoin comes through her because he came through her in to this world. That does not say that we are saved by her. Get it right.
[ February 12, 2003, 09:56 AM: Message edited by: thessalonian ]