No...they did not pray to departed believers.
If that had been part of the "Tradition" Roman Catholicism claims was passed on Paul would have written that in at least one of his writings. That he didn't is telling.
But I do agree with the appeal to Scripture as authority!
As well, St Paul exhorted his converts frequently to hold fast to the traditions (not any-old-traditions, but Apostolic Traditions -— we’d give them a capital “T”) and to follow their oral teaching, as well as their practical example.
Paul used the word tradition three times in the affirmative and two were in 2 Thessalonians. I wouldn't call that frequently.
The entire NT uses it only 13 times with 10 in the negative.
A word study of tradition shows the historical traditions of the Jews were discarded by Jesus and Paul.
As you know, the Church had liturgies (approved forms of public prayer), creeds, catechisms like the Didache, and bishops’ homilies to draw upon, for many generations before they had winnowed out all the extant writings and approved the canon of the New Testament.
The NT church had no such "approved prayers" as seen in Roman Catholicism today. Certainly no prayers to Mary or the departed saints. No prayers to Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, etc.
The Didache is so riddled with contrary teachings of the NT it is almost laughable it is appealed to.
What the Roman Catholic cannot produce, though it has been requested, are the exact things Paul or the other Apostles are said to have "passed down".
We know it wasn't the Assumption of Mary.
We know it wasn't the papacy for that didn't come into existence until the 4th century...some suggest the 5th.
It wasn't the Mass as practiced by Roman Catholicism today as Rome's own sources admit they don't know how it originated.
Roman Catholicism cannot claim what they are doing today is what the Apostles did ...or for that matter was "handed down".
The origin of the Roman Mass, on the other hand, is a most difficult question, We have here two fixed and certain data: the Liturgy in Greek described by St. Justin Martyr (d. c. 165), which is that of the Church of Rome in the second century, and, at the other end of the development, the Liturgy of the first Roman Sacramentaries in Latin, in about the sixth century.
The two are very different.
Justin's account represents a rite of what we should now call an Eastern type, corresponding with remarkable exactness to that of the Apostolic Constitutions (see LITURGY). The Leonine and Gelasian Sacramentaries show us what is practically our present Roman Mass.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09790b.htm
How did the service change from the one to the other if it were "handed down" from one Apostle to another????
Kinda wipes out your appeal to "Tradition".
When will you acknowledge that Catholic don't pray to the departed; they pray to God to have mercy on the souls of the departed?
You have been corrected on this more than once, yet you continue to misrepresent the Catholic faith.
Your understanding of Tradition is erroneous. The examples you give do not constitute any argument at all against a coherent Apostolic Tradition as regards liturgy, let alone doctrine.
For instance, when speaking of the Liturgy for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, it is perfectly obvious that there are different customs and different rites. (You announce this as if it would be news to me!).
There are 22 official Capital-R Rites (that is to say, major, historically distinguishable liturgical traditions) in the Catholic Church, including the Chaldean, the Coptic, the Mozarabic, the Melkite, the Maronite, the Greek Catholic Byzantine, etc., as well as different Eucharistic Canons in use within a single ritual tradition, e.g. the Latin (Western) Church uses a variety of canons.
It’s not the tiny distinctives that constitute Apostolic Tradition,( e.g. whether you cross yourself from right to left or from left to right, whether you have an Iconostasis or Rood Screen or a Communion Rail or whether you receive Communion standing or kneeling, etc.). What makes it Apostolic Tradition is the basics which we all share, across the continents, the cultures and the centuries, which come from the Apostolic teaching whether in Antioch or Lyons or Jerusalem or Alexandria, or Ctesiphon or Cadiz or Milan or Crete or Constantinople or Hippo or Rome.
The reason I list the mini-geographical gazette is that what we’re looking for is not uniformity of language, expression and culture (impossible) but the amazing agreement on the basics, which is why all these far-flung churches are said go be IN COMMUNION WITH EACH OTHER.
What are these amazing commonalities? Brother, it would take a library and a lifetime -— but it comes down to these basic points:
*Hierarchical structure: the faithful assembled around their bishop
*Eucharistic realism: the Real Presence of Christ -—Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity ,-— in the Sacrifice of the Mass (or Divine Liturgy or however they want to call it)
*The Sacramental life
*the various Creeds (which preceded the Canon of the NT and determined the Canon of of the NT )-— It is essential to grasp that the Creeds determined what is accepted as Scripture, and not t’other way around: Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed, etc.
*the veneration of holy persons, holy places, and holy things
*distinctive doctrines about Mary -— her status as the handmaid of the Lord her Savior, her ever-virginity, her sinlessness, her Assumption (or Dormition or however it is variously termed) whether it is formally defined or undefined
*intercessory prayer understood to include the whole Body of Christ, and not just the minority of members who happen to be walking around on the earth right now
*praying for the faithful departed, and asking the blessed in heaven to pray with us and for us.
I’m on my Kindle and away from my computer, so I don’t have access to my links and resources, and this is generated out of my memory and incomplete even as an outline.
It is necessary to grasp the basics before you are equipped to have a sensible opinion about liturgies, rites, and the development of doctrine.
I’m trying to supply you with the bare-minimum historic perspective. All the truths here are due to the Holy Spirit’s promised guidance of the Church.
All the obscurity, inadequacy or error is my own!