So where did I miss the mark on Mary worship?
Starting with your use of the word “unapproachable.” If He is so unapproachable, then why do Catholic believe that we consume His very Flesh and Blood at every Mass?
Catholics don’t worship Mary, they honor Mary because she is the Mother of God, and our Mother in Heaven.
The Blessed Virgin Mary is the one woman in the entire Bible who makes the claim, “All generations to come shall call me blessed” (Luke 1:48). And why is that? Well, Catholics believe it is because she was preserved from all time from sin by a special privilege of God. God got to create His own mother on earth.
Since original sin (The sin of Adam) is passed down through the womb from one generation to the next, God made Mary free from original sin so that Jesus would also be free from it. This Catholic dogma is called the Immaculate Conception of Mary. This doctrine does not mean that Mary doesn’t need a Savior; in fact, in her Magnificat speech, she says that “her soul rejoices in God my savior” (Luke 1:47). All this means is that she was prevented from falling into the snake pit of sin by the grace of God, rather than being saved from it after sinning, like the rest of us. Catholics believe that this was prefigured in Genesis 3:15, where God told Adam and Eve that He “Will put enmity” between the devil and “THE WOMAN”. Since Eve was in compliance with the devil, and not at enmity, THE WOMAN could not refer to her, but rather a future “WOMAN” who would have enmity (lifelong hatred) with Satan. The entire Genesis 3:15 verse reads as follows from the RSV:
“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”