I have been told time and time again that catholics don't pray to Mary.Obviously I've been misinformed.
Yes, you have been misinformed. We Catholics most certainly pray to the saints, including Mary. The problem though is not that we pray, but that others are offended by this. This is due to ignorance and a deprivation of true worship, which makes people conflate actions like prayer and singing into worship. While prayer can be worship, it is also possible for it to be otherwise. The word 'prayer' means to implore, beseech or beg. That is all. It doesn't mean to worship or adore or to ask in a way only befitting to God, or any other such thing. It doesn't even have anything to do with whether the person being asked is alive or not.
Speak the speach, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you...Hamlet
Is Hamlet worshiping the player? Is Shakespeare ignorant about English? Is Shakespeare suggesting that the player is dead, or worse yet, that he is God? Of course not. To pray is to ask earnestly, beg, plead, implore, and so on. If churches today still retained the true Eucharistic worship our Lord gave us, wherein we were able to participate in the offering of the High Priest himself, people would stop going around pretending that singing a song about somebody is worship, or talking to them is worship, or drawing a picture of them is worship. The paranoia that all of these things is worship is simply evidence that there are many people out there who are not doing very much by way of true worship of the Lord, and so in turn just try to make out that everybody else are engaged in idolatry.
Yes, we pray to the saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary. If some Catholic out there says otherwise they are confused.
Yes, it was in 17th century vernacular. You can use it today but that would mean that when you beg the tax-collector to lower your taxes you will be "praying" to him/her? When a child pleads for his Mom not to spank him/ her that would be "praying to her? Uh...yeah, right. I think we both know that is not today's sense of the word.
Don't attempt to communicate to those beyond the grave. It's spiritualism. The only one worthy of our prayers today is God.