>Catholics pray to saints.
No, Catholics venerate and ask for the intercession of saints. There's a difference.
>they confess their sins to a priest (which defeats the purpose of Jesus' supposed life in the first place, to cut out the middle man)
Catholics do not confess “to” the priest; rather, they confess to God “in the presence of” the priest who, as the prayer before Confession clearly states, is God’s witness.
>they hold Mary up as divine
No, Mary was not divine -- but she is honored as the Theotokos and as humanity's advocate before God.
>and they create what are essentially idols(the crucifix, crying statues, preserved corpses, etc.)
Except the Seventh Ecumenical Council affirmed the propriety of icons as genuine expressions of the Christian faith.
As bad as Marian Horvat's assumptions about Protestants are, your misconceptions of Catholicism are just as worth.
>I went to a Catholic middle school.
And I have a degree in history and Western religion.
