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Barna research says slightly more than four out of five adults in the U.S. (84%) claim they had prayed in the past week. That has been the case since Barna began tracking the frequency of prayer in 1993.

U.S. News and the Internet site Beliefnet funded a poll to learn more about why, how, where and when people pray. Here is a summary of the findings: · 75% percent were Christian. · 64% say they pray more than once a day.· 56% say they most often pray for family members, with 3.3% saying that they pray for strangers.· A little over 38% say that the most important purpose of prayer is intimacy with God.· 41% say that their prayers are answered often.· 1.5% say that their prayers are never answered.· Over 73% say when their prayers are not answered, the most important reason is because they did not fit God’s plan.· 5% say that they pray most often in a house of worship.· 79% say that they pray most often at home.· 67% say that in the past six months, their prayers have related to continually giving thanks to God. (Pastor's Weekly Briefing, 12/24/04)

A Newsweek poll titled "Is God Listening?" indicated that, of those who pray, 87% believed that God answers their prayers at least some of the time. Even so, unanswered prayers did not deter them from praying. 85% insisted that they could accept God's failure to grant their prayers. Only 13% declared they have lost faith because their prayers went unanswered. 82% don't turn away from God even when their prayers go unanswered. 54% say that when God doesn't answer their prayers, it means it wasn't God's will to answer.The things people pray for include health, safety, jobs, and even success, valid or not. 82% said they ask for health or success for a child or family member when they pray. 82% believed that God does not play favorites in answering prayers. 79% said God answers prayer for healing someone with an incurable disease. 75% asked for strength to overcome personal weakness. 73% answered that prayers for help in finding a job are answered. On the lighter side, 51% agreed that God doesn't answer prayers to win sporting events. 36% have never prayed for financial or career success.

At a recent debate, broadcast worldwide by the BBC, over 87 per cent of the audience rejected the notion that the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. Although the defenders of the Church were confronted by two masters of rhetoric, there is little doubt that the vote reflected a shift in attitudes towards Christianity in general and the Catholic faith in particular. To put this shift in blunt terms, whereas we were regarded recently as nice but naïve, today we are increasingly regarded as evil. As a result, teaching the faith and defending Christian ethics has become much more difficult.

To address this challenge at its root, I believe it is vital that we remind ourselves of the extent to which the Catholic faith is a force for good in the world. Jesus said: “You will know them by their fruits,” and even some outside the Church appreciate her fruitfulness. In 2007, for example, an atheist businessman, Robert Wilson, gave $22.5 million (£13.5 million) to Catholic education in New York, arguing that, “without the Roman Catholic Church, there would be no western civilisation.”

Baptismal Promises You will gather around the baptismal font - a large bowl, usually of stone or marble or glass holding the waters of baptism. Usually the mother holds the child. The celebrant asks the parents what they want for the child. You reply, 'Baptism.' Then you make the baptismal promises on behalf of your child. These promises are based on the Apostles Creed.

Anointing The celebrant anoints your baby with oil on the forehead and on the chest. He anoints the baby with the Oil of Baptism (Catechumens) and with the Oil of Chrism. The Oil of Baptism is olive oil. It relates to the days when athletes used to rub oil into their bodies before events to strengthen them and make their skin more supple. It symbolises strengthening for the struggles of life ahead. The Oil of Chrism is a combination of olive oil and balsam. It symbolises the sealing with the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Baptism with Water The priest pours water over the head of your baby (or immerses the baby in the water) and says "I baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." The water is a sign of cleansing. The water symbolically washes the person being baptised of all sin. It is also a sign of life. Without water nothing can grow. It is a sign of the new spiritual life into which the baptised person is entering.

With 5,126,884 adherents, or 27.56 per cent of the population, Catholics remain Australia's largest denomination, the 2006 census says. Anglicans accounted for 18.7 per cent, equal in number to those who declared no religion.

While more than one in four Australians said they were Catholic in the last census, a shadow falls between their words and actions. The church requires Catholics to attend Mass, but only 14 per cent of them obey the commandment to keep holy the sabbath day. Two Sundays ago at St Canice's Church in Elizabeth Bay, scores of people supped at the soup kitchen underneath the church but fewer than 80 attended 10.30am Mass. Only four of the congregation looked under 20 years old. The night before at St Therese's, a little wooden church at Lansdowne, on the mid-North Coast of NSW, eight people, including three young members of the Connolly family, watched Father Paul O'Neill say Mass.

World Youth Day aims to bring young people back to the Catholic Church, and while some liberals think the hoopla and singing is some sort of second-rate attempt to mimic Hillsong, the Sydney Pentacostal Christian church that is extraordinarily popular with the young, others think Billy Graham laid the groundwork all those years ago. The evangelist arrived in Sydney on February 12, 1959, for a 15-week crusade. Australia was still in the grip of British understatement and had never seen anything like Graham's theatricality. Much of the country was swept up in the kind of feverish excitement that greeted the Beatles five years later. The Billy Graham crusade built and built. His first appearance in Melbourne filled the 5000-capacity West Melbourne Stadium; the next the outdoors Sydney Myer Music Bowl, and finally the Melbourne Showgrounds. In all 714,000 Melburnians, almost everyone who lived in the place, saw Graham. Pretty much the same thing happened in Sydney. About 50,000 showed up at the Moore Park showground, and 150,000 crowded the showgrounds and the adjoining Sydney Cricket Ground for his last Sydney appearance. One million listened on radio. The American's success prompted anthropological coverage in Time magazine, which noted how well Graham had gone down with teenagers. "At one meeting some 2000 of them stepped forward after he had pitched them a line of rock 'n' rollery," it recorded. "In America, teenagers have a language all their own and think that grown-ups are all squares because they can't dig the jive. I heard of one of these cats who went to church and said to the minister: 'Dad, you really blasted me this morning, you were real cool, Dadcool, I mean cool, Dad. That jive of yours so beat me that I dropped $20 in the plate!' And the minister replied, 'Crazy, man, crazy.' " By the time Graham left Australia, 130,000 people, nearly 2 per cent of the population, had reputedly answered his call to come to the stage and make a commitment to Jesus Christ. The historian Stuart Piggin used Australian Bureau of Statistics figures to show the crusade contributed to a drop in alcohol consumption, extramarital births and crime.

Who can receive a Catholic baptism? Anyone who has not already been baptized can receive Baptism in the Catholic Church. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “Every person not yet baptized and only such a person is able to be baptized,” (paragraph 1246). Baptism leaves an indelible (permanent) mark on the soul and there is no way nor any reason that one could be re-baptized.  There are no age restrictions for baptism; you cannot be too old or too young to be baptized.

The Catholic Church has ordinary ministers for sacraments and those are bishops, priests, and sometimes deacons. An ordinary minister is one who has been entrusted with the authority to perform the sacrament although the responsibility for performing a sacrament can usually be delegated. For example, a bishop is the ordinary minister for Confirmation, but can give permission to a priest to do a Confirmation; a priest does not have the authority to do a confirmation without the permission of his bishop. However, priests do have the authority to do baptisms without the permission of the bishop and sometimes delegate the responsibility to a deacon if one is available.

Why are children baptized? Children receive baptism primarily to remove original sin, but can serve as a great family tradition in which to inculturate one’s child into the faith of the family. Infant baptism has been debated for centuries. First, let us appeal to the Bible. John 3:5 says, “Jesus answered, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.’” Note that Jesus says “no one” can enter heaven in that passage. In the spirit of brevity here is the short answer straight from the Catechism: “The practice of infant Baptism is an immemorial tradition of the Church. There is explicit testimony to this practice from the second century on, and it is quite possible that, from the beginning of the apostolic preaching, when whole “households” received baptism, infants may also have been baptized,” (Acts 16:15,33; 18:8; 1 Corinthians 1:16). (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1252)