You wrote:
“The “we’re just asking the departed to pray for us” usually gets trotted out in defense of what is unmistakably asking the dead to DO (”save us”, “protect us”, “grant us”, “give us”, etc.) things, along with words of praise and adoration - indistinguishable from outright worship violating the 1st Commandment.”
No.
1) There’s no adoration.
2) We praise saints only in their relationship to the God Who made them saints.
3) No saint has any power other than that given him by God.
4) Saints aren’t dead.
Matthew 22:29... Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”
God is the God of the living. The saints are alive in God.
1. Those prayers sure sound “adoring” to me. “Most sacred...”, “Merciful...”, “O compassionate...”, “Holy...”, etc.
2. Nothing in Scripture warrants praising, unto deifying glorification, any other than God.
3. Scripture does not depict ANY “dearly departed” having power to influence the living world.
4. Saints have passed on. They are no more. They has ceased to be. They have expired and gone to meet their maker. The individual is now a stiff. Bereft of life, they rest in peace. If someone hasn’t stuck ‘em in a box they’re pushing up the daisies. The metabolic processes are now history. S/he’s off the twig. They’ve kicked the bucket, shuffled off their mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. They’re dead!
Nothing in Scripture portrays any of the dearly departed as having influence upon the living, be it directly or by intercession. Resurrection will come, but lacking physical embodiment there is no indication their spirit interacts with this world.