Introduction
Catholic Prayers for Children is a big collection of traditional Catholic prayers that have been recited for generations. The author and editor of this book, Karen Jean Matsko Hood, was herself raised and educated in the Catholic Church. She decided to collect some of her favorite traditional prayers.
The Roman Catholic Church traces its history to Jesus Christ and the Apostles. Over the course of centuries, it developed a highly sophisticated theology and an elaborate organizational structure headed by the papacy.
Along with Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism, it is one of the three major branches of Christianity.
Catholic Christianity began as a persecuted religious community, illegal in the Roman Empire in its earliest days, but within some three hundred years and with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, it became legal and eventually was recognized as the official religion of the Empire. With the decline and fall of Rome in the 5th century, the Roman Church assumed both temporal and spiritual authority in the West; it thus had enormous influence on the development of the art and culture of the Western world through the Middle Ages. Today, its growth is fastest in Africa, South America, and Asia.
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world’s largest Christian Church, with more than 1.1 billion members worldwide. These incontestable statistical and historical facts suggest that some under- standing of Roman Catholicism, its history, its institutional structure, its beliefs and practices, and its place in the world is an indispensable component of cultural literacy, regardless of how one may individually answer the ultimate questions of life and death and faith.
There are more Roman Catholics than all other Christians combined and more Roman Catholics than all Buddhists or Hindus. Although there are more Muslims than Roman Catholics, the number of Roman Catholics is greater than that of the individual traditions of Shīite and Sunni Islam.
The Catholic hierarchy is led by the Pope and includes cardinals, patriarchs, and diocesan bishops. The Church teaches that it was founded by Jesus Christ, that its bishops are the successors of Christ’s apostles and that the Pope is the sole successor to Saint Peter who has apostolic primacy.
