we venerate mary as the mother of god and queen of heaven in much the same way we venerate all of the saints. we absolutely don't worship mary or the saints in the same way as we worship the father, son, and holy spirit - but we can meditate on them (which """"idols"""" and icons assist with, as they're meant to, seriously look at the pieta for a while and see how it makes you feel) and pray for their intercession.  there are plenty of apologetic works on the catholic understanding of mary's "other children". the good thing about being catholic is that we have a two millennia old line of succession that created a vast collection of apologetic and polemical works for us to draw our conclusions from. protestants just get to make up whatever retarded blasphemous fanfiction they want and handwave it as "god personally told me my opinion is right".
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