catholicism
@0x4d6165 What follows is a somewhat incoherent theory relating to early christianity:Mary's importance in Catholicism today a survival from early heretical christian and also functioned as a way to incorporate aspects of so called pagan goddess cults into their whole orthodoxy... like the gnostic trinity which iirc predates the orthodox version was God the Father, Sophia mother of wisdom and baby Jesus. Sophia is a complicated deity in that there are multiple contradictory mythologies surrounding her, but it makes sense she'd get replaced with 'holy spirit' because she was seen as the source of wisdom (gnosis)... women had a lot of influence in early Christianity, Mary Magdalen, if the gospels have any historic validity was probably a leader in the original lineup, and the spread of Christianity in roman empire was largely helped by patronage from upper class women who often were introduced to it by their slaves ( christianity has much to say on slave/master interpersonal ethics ) many slaves were Jews or other Semitic peoples like Cartheginians, Coptics, Phoenicians etc the wives of roman citizens being legally property of the pater familis weren't that much beter off, so early christianity had this quality of a servile revolt that could be seen as feminist in this context, and the "Church Fathers" i.e. the Orthodoxy and future Catholic Church didn't like any of that social equality shit and so instituted a forever war against Heresy that uprooted anything in early Christianity that was dangerous to their patriarchal slavocracy, the mystical gnostics, reasonable modern thinking christians like Origen, so what the Padres did was on the one hand re-assert roman patriarchy while also throwing women the proverbial bone -- Sophia and anything gnostic sounding including genuine texts like Gospel of Thomas get the boot, Mary Magdalene is smeared as a sex worker ( this is not in the text ) but Mary the "Mother of God" ( literally Sophia in sethian mythology ) is venerated for her 'virginity' - another weird take, since she was obviously not a lifelong virgin, she had other children referred to in the gospels, namely "James the Just" who was Jesus' biological brother and head of Jerusalem church after Jesus' death, his martyrdom was recorded by Josephus.
But even knowing all that i think strength of Catholicism is exactly that is contains that historical legacy as a movement of subtaltern for mutual aide and social equality, it's why it's able to adapt to so many cultural situations, , because it has this pre-capitalist, side to it. And compare this to Protestantism, religion of capitalism par exellence, protestants accuse Catholics of idolatry for Mary and the Saints, but they also have no equivalent divine feminine at all and i think this misogynistic aversion any feminine veneration is a big part of protestant anti-catholicism, also related to laisee faire austerity etc.