...and many Catholics bow before and kiss the gilded, bejeweled, dessicated remains of dead people.
Yes. That pretty much sums up Catholicism.
Your Catholic friends must be amazed by your knowledge.
And even if I agreed, I'd still shrug my shoulders and say, "So?" The one thing that protestant can never do is establish a motive to worship as God the relic of a saint and Mary. Sure they can post pictures, cherry-pick scripture and use it out of context but they can't prove it. And they sure can't prove that the Catholic Church teaches it, because they know it teaches the opposite.
In the end it's all about, "I don't like that." I'm gonna go find me a scripture passage that appears to agree with me etc., ad nauseam.
All they are left is inference and supposition. But given the intellectual rigor (or lack thereof) that the protestant uses in their approach to the Word or God for that matter I'm not surprised that being the equivalent of a gaggle of junior high school girls in the bathroom comes naturally to them in matters of theology.