I know that Catholics desperately want people to believe that but evidence shows otherwise. Excuses that bowing to images is really bowing to the "person" or god the image represents doesn't change the fact that its still an idol. Worshiping a "host" is idolitry. Bowing and praying to some dead guy's body parts is idolitry. And please don't insult your intelligence by claiming Catholics don't pray "to" those so called saints. The Catholic Church and its advocates admit they do.
Every Catholic theologian in history, and every Catholic moral theology manual ever published, and every Catholic catechism ever published, condemns idolatry.
What you are saying is that there is a “secret” Catholic teaching that approves idolatry. This “secret” has been transmitted secretly to several billions of people down the centuries. There are about a billion Catholics alive today, who are in on the “secret,” and they are ALL in on the conspiracy to transmit the “secret,” while managing to keep this “secret” teaching out of absolutely all published material. They have even published thousands of articles and pamphlets that explain that idolatry is a mortal sin, while simultaneously spreading the “secret” teaching to billions of people, without the use of ANY printed material whatsoever. This secret communication system has been kept secret for approximately two thousand years. It has been kept secret by a tight inner circle of billions of people.
The Second Commandment forbids the making of images and bowing to them.
One can argue all day about whether what’s going on in a person’s head is really worship or not, but bowing is bowing and that can be plainly and objectively seen.
And there are plenty of Catholic prayers online, well known ones at that, which show that Catholic DO ask saints and angels for things, not merely to ask them to pray for us.
The internet is a valuable source and one that exposes the truth about what Catholics pray. They cannot snow people who can read for themselves.