“When we kneel, we are praying to God and we are asking Mary, the woman God chose to be the vessel in which He would begin to live as man, to join her prayers to ours.”
That is not always the case, my friend. Many prayers, sanctioned by the RCC, are not asking Mary to pray for the petitioner, they are asking Mary to grant out of her own store of grace the answer to some need.
THAT is prayer TO Mary.
She is the one answering the prayer. She is dispensing the goods.
There are even prayers to lesser saints asking them to intercede to Mary on behalf of the petitioner. That’s even more layers of mediation. When does it stop?
The disciples were clear. There is only ONE mediator between God and man.
And were you aware that in some of the early fathers’s writings that the apostles were transported miraculously to Mary’s bedside as she died?