Abraham’s bosom is a prison! I’m sorry, I don’t get that from the text.
To be made in the image of something doesn’t mean there is a statue present to me. We of course are made in God’s image. That doesn’t imply statues or so forth.
I might entertain the idea that there might have been statues here or there if God throughout His word didn’t so strongly forbid them.
If the saints don’t dispense the grace, then I am not sure why you petition them.
You may not get that from the text, because you rely on the text alone. However, Catholic theology is firm on this: prior to the sacrifice of the Cross, man was without ordinary recource to sanctification; righteousness was extraordinary. Death was the rule; the righteous people who died awaited the liberation from the future messiah. That was their prison, known as the limbo of the fathers.
Christ gave everyone, including those in that prison, eternal life. That opened the heavens and enabled the ininhibited communication for anyone with God, the angels and the saints. The order of the universe has changed after the Cross.
Regarding holy images, I don’t see how else to read those verses, other than as an indication that veneration of icons and statues was a practice in the Early Church and so it was described, and praised, by St. Paul. Perhaps some way to explain these prooftexts away exists, but this is how I as Catholic understand them. Your original thesis was that the Catholic worldview goes against the scripture. No, — most emphatically not. It only goes against the Protestant interpretation of it.
Thank you very much for your thoughtfullness. I wish every debate went on equally friendly terms.