St. Ephraim the Syrian is not commemorated on any of our calendars that we are aware of. We generally don't call it "veneration" anyways. We do have some of his hymns adapted to music, however.
This was my point in picking such a widely venerated (yes, venerated) saint: we have in St. Ephrem a perfectly fine Orthodox saint (according to the recognition given to him in that Church), a perfectly fine Catholic saint (according to the recognition given to him in that Church), a perfectly fine Protestant saint (according to the recognition given to him in some Protestant churches, such as the Anglicans), but because you -- a Lutheran -- belong to a church that does not venerate him, that...means something somehow. "We wouldn't do that." Okay then. So what? This thread is not about what you would our wouldn't do -- it's about what Roman Catholicism does or sanctions doing.
Saying "That's not what some Protestants would be comfortable with" has nothing to do with anything. Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox are not the same, so of course there are going to be these differences among them. I don't know why or how that required you to turn this thread into "FireDragon76 thinks that EO and RC both go to far in their Marian devotions".
I am not out to sell any particular religion as the only true church.
Well...at least if you
were, you'd be in the right place to argue as you are arguing...but that doesn't make the argument any more valid.
People that feel that way have a tendency to gloss over details, I have noticed. I try to just talk about things as a see them. And Marian devotion is very real in Orthodoxy, and while it is different in some ways from Catholicism, it is significantly problematic from a Protestant perspective that it deserves mention.
And that's fine, but you can't expect the Protestant perspectives to have any bearing on what the EO or the RC do, since they were doing that before Protestantism ever existed.
Orthodoxy is not kin to Protestantism, unlike what some Orthodox apologists portray it as being.
[Citation needed]
To my knowledge, the only Orthodox theologian I have encountered that seriously objected to the Immaculate Conception was St. John of San Francisco, and he did so on the confession that Christ alone was sinless. But other Orthodox disagree with the Immaculate Conception only because they have a non-Augustinian understanding of sin, so they see it as irrelevant, not offensive in the way that St. John did. They basically do agree that Mary was a special superhuman being separated from the rest of humanity, a prototypical nun.
What on earth...? Uh...maybe this is a Chalcedonian thing (I really, really doubt it), but no, the Theotokos is
not a "superhuman being separated from the rest of humanity." I can't find it just now, but HH Pope Theodosius of Alexandria (the last Pope to be recognized by EO and OO in Egypt, in the 530s) gave a brilliant sermon on this which underlined the objections held in common by both, which stem precisely from the need to preserve the proper understanding of St. Mary's humanity and
not turn into some kind of super being.
You are really off base with this, and a lot of your criticisms. I don't know where you're getting your information, but even though I obviously can't comment on what some EO saint said at some point because I don't know anything about that, I do know that the objection to the Immaculate Conception predates the invention of the doctrine by many, many centuries (and it's the same objection we still have today).
Unlike other Protestants, we actually have nothing against statues or icons of Mary. But we do not believe she is a superwoman or was born sinless
Neither do any Orthodox.
nor is there any promise in the Scriptures that she has special intercessory powers
Her intercessions are 'special' as she is literally the mother of God, but it's not as though other saints aren't petitioned. We are all called to intercede for one another (Ephesians 6:18), and as the saints have already run the race, then who better is there to call upon? The mother of God!
or that we should seek her intercession.
Well that's on you. Nobody can force you to do anything you don't want to do, but those who refuse to give proper honor to the mother of God are definitely anathema from this side of the Nile. We are very strong in our devotion to the Theotokos, and frankly anyone who has a problem with that is going to have a problem with much more than our Church's own traditions. We pray for the Coptic month of Kiahk:
"Arise, O poor one, and clothe yourself with faith, and say 'Amen, amen, for us she intercedes!' The persistent servant will always praise her, for by His side that day the Lady of Virgins shall be." It is part of our faith just as the veneration of the holy cross or any other thing which is taken as a shield for the believers is. And this is not just the intercession of St. Mary, even though she is considered the greatest of all saints, but of all the saints similarly. St. Mary is singled out of course because of her very singular role in bearing Jesus Christ our Lord and God. That is as it should be. What kind of faith would it be that God should choose her and yet
we should not? We don't know better than God.
Those are all man-made traditions
In the sense that Christ -- Who said of St. Mary His mother to His beloved disciple "Behold your mother" -- is both God
and Man, yes, sure.
without a divine promise attached to them
Those who know the intercession of the Holy Theotokos know better. I do not ask her intercession or any saint's intercession for 'divine promises' anyway, but for help and strength in supplicating the Lord for the forgiveness of my many sins. At least in the Coptic tradition, the standard format of the intercessory prayer -- called the
Hiteni (sing.) or
Hiteniyat (pl.) after its opening line in Coptic -- is a prayer
to God through the intercession of His saints:
"Through the prayers of the holy Theotokos St. Mary, O Lord, grant us the forgiveness of our sins." I am sure the EO and probably also Catholics (or maybe Eastern Catholics more specifically) have something similar.
Not to be a smart aleck, but I did just allude to the Gospel of St. John (19:25-29). I know you'll probably say "that's not how Protestants would read that", so again...okay. Protestants and Orthodox are different. We all know that already.