MDO,
We will disagree on the meaning of the act and the justification you put forth. There are a number of reasons for this disagreement, which I will summarize.
Pulling from the posts you linked...
“This “Great Sign,” the queen in the heavens, is the mother of Jesus’ brethren, those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus. There we have her pictured, in highly symbolic terms, as both Queen-Mother (in relation to Jesus) and as Mother of all the faithful. Also as a figure of the Church: Lady Ecclesia. These are all related images.”
The woman in Revelation is not dear Mary, but Israel. Mary is not the queen of anything, anywhere in Scripture.
“So the better foreshadowing of Mary in the OT is maybe that glimpse of how King Solomon treated Bathsheba.”
Please differentiate between your opinion that this is foreshadowed and a revelation that it is foreshadowing. In this case, we have no revelation, but an opinion. This opinion did not exist until hundreds of years after dear Mary trod the earth.
“This gives us a royal Biblical cultural orientation on what sort of honor was considered apt and right for a Queen Mother:”
Of which dear Mary is not any kind of...
“Similarly, Mary is the “most highly favored” -— the Angelic Salutation tells us at least that much.
No, she is not the most highly favored one. She is greeted as “highly favored.” She was highly favored by being chosen to bear Messiah.
“Hence the Catholic term for the honor accorded her, “hyperdulia,” which means the highest degree of honor given to a human person.”
Note: “Among those born of women, none is higher than John the Baptist.” - Jesus.
So again, while I understand the backfilling that occurred centuries after the event as paganism crept into the church, it remains wrong.
Now, on to this post I am responding to...
“D-88, like any sensible person, realizes that the issue is not bowing, or kneeling, or any such gesture in itself.”
Partly true. Angels consistently told humans to rise. They knew it was inappropriate for the human to bow before them.
“The issue is whether a creature is giving supreme adoration to God or to a creature -— because very creature is not only “less” than God, but infinitely less than God.”
Partly true. The issue isn’t giving “supreme adoration”, but adoration as more than human. While you and many others may rightly claim you are not giving adoration, but respect, I would guess that hundreds of millions do not share that with you.
“The Bible illustrates a vast spectrum of gestures of honor to human beings, and even holy things (the Ark of the Covenant) and holy places (the Temple; the City of Jerusalem) to which people very properly gave honors such as bowing and even prostration. This is not a case of unfaithful Jewish apostates worshiping idols. These are the customary obsequies of a devout and courtly society.
People didn’t bow down to the Ark, but to the God of the Ark. Nor the Temple, but to the God who identified His presence in the Holy of Holies. It was always about God.
There is absolutely no record of an Apostle or other Christian bowing down before Mary. For this reason, we are not talking about the Apostle’s tradition. It was unknown to them. We are talking about a non-Christian practice that crept into the church after the Apostles.
You can attempt to justify this practice with references to OT courtliness, but surely you do not argue we are in the OT times.
Your opinion is certainly not authoritative for me (sorry!) -- nor mine for you, I'm sure --- and of course any discussion that simmers down to "opinion vs opinion" will end in frustration. But since we are interested in evidence, let me offer this:
Note that the Woman gives birth to a male child who is to rule the nations with a rod of iron. Who, in our opinion, is this male child? That’s a reference to the Messianic prophecy in Psalm 2, where we read:
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron [Ps. 2:8-9].
Jesus fulfilled this Messianic prophecy.
The fact that the male child is caught up to the throne of God is a reference to Jesus’ Ascension into heaven, so we have another confirmation that the male child is Jesus.
And since the Woman who gives birth to him is his Mother, we could infer that the Woman here is Jesus’ mother, the Virgin Mary.
This does not exclude the insight that the Woman also represents Israel, since the "sun and moon and (11 or 12) stars recalls where Joseph (in Genesis) says he's dreamed that his mother and father, and brothers (the heads of the tribes of Israel)--- represented by sun, moon and stars---- will down down o him. SO, Israel is represented by this Woman.
She has, moreover, other offspring, those who are faithful to the testimony of Jesus (Revelation 12:17). So she is Ecclesia (as John would say, Elect Lady), the mother of the faithful. This may surprise you, but the Catholic Church does not have "official" dogmatic interpretations for most of the Bible, verse by verse. We have scholars who publish commentaries, and the commentaries vary from person to person, just like amongst the Protestant, Evangelical and Reformed brethren. The whole thing has not been dogmatized. There is much that is quite mysterious.
I have always appreciated the multiple-meaning approach of the more symbolic things in Revelation.