I think it might be helpful to bring to mind the difference between "person" and "nature." Jesus Christ is a divine Person who has two natures: divine and human.
A human person (like you or me) could never be, and will never be, a divine Person. IN that sense, we are never "divinized," we never become "gods" either in the Mormon sense of plural gods (polytheism) or in the Brahmin sense of being merged into God so that one's own human personhood simply dissolves.
Those two senses (polytheism or personal annihilation) are errors --- I think we'd both agree on that. Those senses are not St. Peter's meaning, and are not the Catholic meaning.
Bu when you look at what Peter said, precisely, he said we are "partakers (koinónos) of the divine nature" not of the divine Personhood.
"Person" answers the question "WHO is that?"
"Nature" answers the question "WHAT is that?" Or, functionally, "What can it do? hat is it capable of?"
It seems to me --- and metaphysics isn't my bag, so I'm kind of feeling my way here --- that if we are partakers in His divine nature, we become sharers or partners in what He does, and we have a relationship (not an identity, a relationship) with His incomparably high and infinitely majestic Person.
Any doctrine of sharing the divine nature, I think, would have to observe these distinctions. If any of the great Catholic teachers like Saint Irenaeus or Clement of Alexandria speak of being "in the end, gods" they must be understood in this sense: that we are called to be partakers in the Divine nature, not as Divine Persons, of who there are only Three: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
CCC 460 The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God." "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."
Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, of his boundless love, became what we are that he might make us what he himself is.” (Against Heresies 5, preface)
Clement of Alexandria
- “Yea, I say, the Word of God became a man so that you might learn from a man how to become a god.” Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks,
“He became man that we might be made divine.” Athanasius, On the Incarnation,
That we might be made divine? We become a god? We are made ”what he himself is? I don’t think you can spin those any other way than to understand that the Catholic Church teaches people will become gods.