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No. Catholics "honor" Mary as the Mother of God, calling her Blessed Mother and Our Lady. These devotions in no way place Mary equal to God Himself.
Praying to the Saints and the dead is totally foreign to the Protestant. It is foreign because these brothers and sisters do not understand nor accept the Communion of Saints which implies that the faithful on Earth continue to remain connected to those who have passed on in God's friendship and are in Heaven. Protestants do not accept nor seek intercessory prayer from the Saints, and in so doing, reject any Catholic practices of such with Mary or any other Saint. It must be said that at the time of the Reformation, Luther "threw out" books such as 2 Maccabees that clearly illustrate and validate the practice of praying to the dead. Without such Scripture, Protestants ever since have had no Scriptural basis for the understanding and acceptance of Catholic practices for intercession and prayers for the dead [see 2 Mac. 12:38-46, 2 Mac. 15:11-16]).
Protestant doctrines usually say little about Mary, other than that Jesus Christ was conceived and born of the Virgin Mary, because Scripture provides little detail about her life. "If Scripture says little, then we cannot know Mary." As a result, many of our non-Catholic brothers and sisters keep their distance from Mary, so to speak, and maintain hostility toward Catholic practices and teachings about Mary.
One can reasonably conclude that Mary is uniquely special among Christians, not just because she is the Mother of Jesus but because of that, she must have been given a special grace by God in order to be 'fit' to be the Mother of God. This 'special grace' Catholics rightly believe to be her (Mary's) Immaculate Conception.
How can that be? Let's look at the doctrine of Original Sin. Now, most Christians, Protestant and Catholic, believe in Original Sin. It is also no stretch to understand and accept that Jesus was born without the stain of Original Sin, given that God is without Original Sin, Jesus is God, and therefore Jesus Himself is without Original Sin. (As such, Jesus' earthly mission was to become the "New Adam.") A person is born with Original Sin because they inherit it from their parents, going all the way back to Adam and the Fall. So, if Jesus DID NOT inherit Original Sin, that means that Mary herself had to be free from Original Sin in order to not pass the stain along to Jesus. Obviously God the Father did not pass Original Sin to Jesus. Therefore, Mary (the 'New Eve') is indeed quite special, as the angel Gabriel addressed her, "Hail, full of grace..." (Lk. 1:28) FULL of grace, meaning without Original Sin, not just 'partially' with grace as are the rest of us!
It is unfortunate that Mary is a stumbling block in the evangelical dialogue between Catholics and Fundamentalists. Aside from Reason which inevitably points to Mary's Immaculate Conception, there is no evidence based on Scripture that Mary did not remain a virgin all of her life.
Here are some common objections:
1. Mary sinned just as the rest of us do!
Paul writes in Romans 3:23 that: "all ('pantes' in the original Greek) sinned and lack God's glory." Some Fundamentalists quote this verse out of context in order to claim that Mary was a sinner. Is their claim true?
No. Paul's use of the word 'pantes' ("all") in Romans 3:23 does not say that every single person since Adam has sinned! Think about the many young babies who have died shortly after birth. They obviously never sinned! Paul explains in Romans 5:19 that as a result of Adam's disobedience "many" ('polloi'), and not "all," were made sinners.
2. Jesus must have had brothers according to Scripture.
The word for "brother" in New Testament Greek is 'adelphos'. However, the word 'adelphos' as used in the Bible does not refer to a relationship of blood brotherhood. The word 'adelphos' carries a wide range of meanings, to include: "brother, near kinsman or relative; one of the same nation or nature; one of equal rank and dignity; an associate; a member of the Christian community."
So what is Jesus' relationship to these "brothers"? In Mark 6:3 (cf. Matt. 13:55), the people of Nazareth ask, "Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Jude, and Simon?" So did Mary not remain a Virgin?
No. In Mark 15:40 (cf. Matt. 27:56), standing near the cross with Mary Magdalene and Salome is a woman named Mary, and she is the mother of James the less and Joses. Later, in Mark 16:1 (cf. Luke 24:10), this same Mary is referred to as "Mary [the mother] of James." Similarly, in Matthew 27:61 and Matt. 28:1, this same Mary is referred to as "the other Mary," to distinguish her from Mary the Mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. John 19:25 says, "Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the [wife] of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene."
The Bible says that two of the brothers of the Lord, James the less and Joses, were in fact his cousins.
Some say that there exists a specific word for cousin, which is 'anepsios'. They claim that this is evidence that the word 'adelphos', when used in relation to the so-called "brothers" of Jesus, must refer to uterine brothers. But this is not the case for the actual Biblical use of the word 'adelphos'.
The book of Genesis discusses Lot, the son of Haran, and the nephew of Abraham (Gen. 11:27, 31). The Bible calls Lot the BROTHER (caps mine) of Abraham in several passages. In addition, the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint, the very Bible used by St. Paul, the evangelists, and the early Christians) also calls Lot the 'adelphos' (or brother) of Abraham (Gen 13:8, 14:14, 16). From this, we definitely know that the Bible makes use of the term 'brother' for cousin.
Keep in mind that the Semitic languages do not make the distinctions as to degrees of kinship that the English and Greek make. The New Testament authors allowed the inprecise, if you will, linguistics that one finds in, say Hebrew or Aramaic, to be carried over into the Greek descriptions of Jesus and his kinfolk that one finds in the Gospels. They were in fact following the linguistic paradigm established in the Septuagint.
3. The Bible Says that Jesus Was Mary's First-Born so this must mean that Mary Had other Children as well.
Some cite Luke 2:7 to support their idea that Mary had other children than Jesus. They say that the words "she gave birth to a son, her first-born" proves that other children followed Jesus. But this is simply not the case, since in the Bible the term "first-born" functions in the first place as a specific legal term used to refer to the first child to open the womb (Ex. 13:2, Num. 3:12, Num. 18:15), and especially to the first male child to "open the womb" (e.g., Ex. 13:11-13, Ex. 34:20). This is in fact how Luke uses the term "first-born," since Luke 2:23 tells us that Mary and Joseph presented the Infant Jesus at the Temple in accordance with the Law that "Every first-born male must be consecrated to the Lord."
So what does this mean?
Jesus was only about a month old, and Mary could not possibly have had any other child at that point even though Jesus is already accorded the legal status of "first-born" male.
If we accept the claim that "first-born" refers primarily to the idea that other children existed, then the ancient Jews would not have had to redeem their first-born sons until a second son was born. After all, until that point, the first-born son would have been an "only-born" son. Which is to say, Mary and Joseph would not have presented Jesus in the Temple just 33 days or so after Mary gave birth to Jesus (Lv. 12:2-4). But of course, Jesus was presented at the Temple (Lk. 2:23) as the first-born, even though he had no brothers or sisters.
Therefore, the notion that Mary had other Children than Jesus is un-Biblical and untrue.
So one must conclude that reason and Scripture equally point towards the truth behind Catholic teachings about Mary.
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