Hi, Sean —

It's actually pretty simple on one level. We know that all grace come to us from the Person of Jesus Christ the (God/Man) in the Incarnation.

Mary, mediated between heaven and earth as the vessel providing Christ's Humanity (which is just as important as His divinity). She was the means through which all grace — including
Christ Himself came into the world, so she was given the privileged role of being Mediatrix of Grace.

That's a foundational starting point. Many have a hard time understanding this and similar doctrines because they don't understand the Covenant and therefore don't understand God's plan for salvation. God's plan for salvation from the very beginning was to include man. That's why He became man. Before the need for Salvation, God planned on becoming Man and giving Himself to Man; that's what a covenant is.

Once you can wrap your head around that concept, it becomes easier to accept that God chose other human beings to play particular roles in His plan of Salvation.

In a sense, every time you do something in His name, you mediate Christ's presence.

I'll leave it for someone else to get into the specifics of those articles, but as I said, you're not going to get Mariology (the body of beliefs about Mary) until you start to think like a Catholic and have a Catholic understanding of the Incarnation and it's implications.

I'd recommend reading Scott Hahn's writings or CD's on Genesis with study guide as a place to start.

John