Praying To Mary Is Problematic, Even If You Don't Think She's God

Here are some comments I made in a recent thread, which may be helpful to some people:

craigbenno1 wrote:

"A catholic theologian once said to me that the whole issue depends on what you mean by asking someone to pray for you? In their theology they don't see any difference in asking someone who is alive here to pray for them... and asking someone who is dead in this world to asking them...Its to do with how they perceive the state of the dead...The question to ask is whether they actually worship Mary as God or any other statue"

Prayer to the deceased wouldn't have to involve "worship as God" in order to be sinful. There's no reason to expect the deceased to hear our prayers, scripture and early patristic sources condemn attempts to contact the deceased, and the practice is absent in contexts in which we'd expect it to appear if it had been accepted in Biblical and early patristic times.

We've covered this issue in depth in previous threads. See, for example, here, here, here, here, and here. There's a lot more that I haven't linked. Those who pray to Mary frequently do more than "asking Mary to pray for them". See the examples I cited here, and search the web for other examples of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox prayers to Mary. Those prayers are far different than a discussion with a living person, in which you ask that person to pray for you.