Basically this comes down to the canon of saints, and the practice of “asking a saint to pray to god for you” as a prayer. The indirection here is paper-thin veil over what strongly resembles polytheism, right down to various saints having specific charges for whatever is troubling you in life, and universal iconography for the most popular ones. I agree that this comes down to external interpretation, as the internal dogma is pretty clear about what this is. But just like with transubstantiation, the outside observer isn’t given enough context to reach the same conclusions as the church.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard the phrasing “pray to Saint Luke” rather than “ask Saint Luke to pray for you” more often than not.
I agree 100% that it is initially confusing to the outsider. I will admit that I struggle with charitable feelings when this topic gets tossed around so often and it is easily researchable. Perhaps I am just tired of having the same discussion so many times.
And yeah, the “pray to X” used a shorthand by many for “ask X to pray on my behalf” doesn’t help. It also gets further confounded by the huge number of both discrete and nuanced folk religions that exist simultaneously within members of the Catholic faith.
