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“Catholics don’t pray to Mary either. Instead, we ask her to pray for us, and to pass our needs on to her Son.”

And so again is the pattern I see time and again for Catholics to defend themselves from clear transgressions: if X conflicts with scripture, then simply define X as not conflicting with scripture. Pray to Mary? clearly wrong, so we’re just talking to Mary, not praying to her. Worshiping saints? well, that would violate idol worship, so the fact that we’re kneeling in front of a statue lighting candles and fervently begging the dead for favors is, by definition, not worship because worship is defined as something oddly other than what every non-catholic, scripture included, defines it as. Numerous repetitions? clearly condemned by Christ himself, so just define an hour of Hail Marys as not...something condemned. 10,000 years in Purgatory cleanses the not-really-bad of their sins? well, yeah that somehow doesn’t violate “no one comes to the Father but by Me”.

Someone correct me if this slim volume doesn’t take pretty much the same reasoning for some 200 pages.

Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
pray for us sinners now,
and at the hour of death.
Amen.

You nicely scoped the issue. God is clear in His commandments:

Exodus 20:1-6 NKJV

And God spoke all these words, saying: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. “You shall have no other gods before Me.

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.

For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.