My salvation is between the Lord and me not a priest and me. And it is Protestant not protestant less I write catholic.
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That is exactly the same for Catholics also, 'Resolute Conservative'. However, in His Sovereign, Almighty Holy Will, God nearly always chooses to also make use of a mere human being as a "middle-man" (like a priest, or some other human person) to help and assist ALL people with their salvation.
All of us can talk to God directly, and (of course) God can speak directly to each one of us as well, but most often, God chooses to use "middle-men/middle-women" go-betweens to assist us on our paths to salvation.
For example, our Lord did not choose to stay here and personally preach His Gospel to "all the world" forever, but rather, He delegated that important task to His apostles and their successors in the Church Jesus Christ built Himself (as He solemnly promised He would).
And while God could have easily written the entire Bible Himself, and distributed His written Word and revelations to everyone directly, He chose instead to use middle-men -- mere human beings -- to physically write every single word that is in the Bible. You and I cannot read one single word in the Bible that God did not choose to select some fellow human being "middle-man" to actually write it for us.
And the vast majority of us first heard about the Lord from some middle-man/middle-woman, like a parent, teacher, preacher, or some other fellow human being that God specifically chose to be a human being go-between to tell us about Himself.
As God's Church began to develop over time (as documented in "Acts"), certain specific formal offices and structures of authority were set up within the Church to perform specific tasks, with selected leaders to oversee each locality and various duties of the Church as the Church began to spread in the world. (These Church offices and positions of leadership and authority were spoken of in various texts in "Acts", as well as in various letters from Paul, and in various other New Testament texts.) God did not need to do it that way for us through mere middle-men/middle-women, fellow human beings, but God chose to do it that way, and God's ways are so far above our ways that we should not presume to question His Divine choices.