One more thing about the distinction between veneration of Mary and adoration of God. I think it’s easy for non-Catholics to be confused about this, because they see us pray to both so it looks like practically speaking there is no difference between the way we treat God and a creature.
But one has to understand that to the Catholic, the Sacrifice of the Mass is even higher than personal prayer. Sacrifice is due ONLY to God—so you will never ever ever ever find a Mass offered “to Mary or a saint”: that is idolatry. The closest you will get is a Mass offered to God in honor of a saint.
Here are the texts of the Mass, I invite you to check for yourself. Mary, as you can see, hardly shows up in it whatsoever:
http://www.the-pope.com/missals.html
There is really an infinite gulf between the way we pray to Mary and the way we sacrifice to God.
A note for Protestant and Catholic in this particular area of disussion from C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:
Some people draw unwarranted conclusions from the fact that I never say more about the Blessed Virgin Mary than is involved in asserting the Virgin Birth of Christ. But surely my reason for not doing so is obvious? To say
more would take me at once into highly controversial regions. And there is no controversy between Christians which needs to be so delicately touched as this. The Roman Catholic beliefs on that subject are held not only with the
ordinary fervour that attaches to all sincere religious belief, but (very naturally) with the peculiar and, as it were, chivalrous sensibility that a man feels when the honour of his mother or his beloved is at stake.
It is very difficult so to dissent from them that you will not appear to them a cad as well as a heretic. And contrariwise, the opposed Protestant beliefs on this subject call forth feelings which go down to the very roots
of all Monotheism whatever. To radical Protestants it seems that the distinction between Creator and creature (however holy) is imperilled: that Polytheism is risen again. Hence it is hard so to dissent from them that you
will not appear something worse than a heretic-an idolater, a Pagan. If any topic could be relied upon to wreck a book about “mere” Christianity-if any topic makes utterly unprofitable reading for those who do not yet believe
that the Virgin’s son is God-surely this is it.
“Here are the texts of the Mass, I invite you to check for yourself. Mary, as you can see, hardly shows up in it whatsoever.”
But keep in mind that eastern Catholics (and the Orthodox) have a significantly different liturgical tradition. The Theotokos is very much a part of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.
Example: http://www.byzantines.net/liturgy/liturgy.htm