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Obtain for us then a deep hatred of sin and that purity of heart which will attach us to God alone so that out every thought, word and deed may tend to His greater glory.

INDEED. OBTAIN FOR US is NOT the sort of thing one asks the neighbor to do when asking for their prayers.

Am reading a surprisingly good book: Are We Living in the END TIMES? by Tim LaHaye a & Jerry B Jenkins. They have some interesting history. As usual, bold colored emphases are mine:

pp172-175
Every false religion in the world can be traced back to Babylon. Even before its citizens tried to build the Tower of Babel, Satan had made that city his headquarters and introduced idolatry, the first secret societies, and many of the religious practices that continue to the present day. These eventually appeared as the foundational teachings for Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Gaia worship, and a host of other cultic systems summed up in the Bible as "Mystery Babylon." These false religions consistently violate the first four commandments, those that concern man and his relationship to God ("You shall not worship other gods!" "Make no graven images, nor worship them or serve them!" "Do not take the name of the Lord in vain!" "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy!"; see Exodus 20). In short all pagan religions depend on the worship of images, or as some call them, "aids to worship."
If Babylon is the mother of all false religions and Jerusalem is the mother of true faith (since Jesus Christ was crucified, buried, and resurrected there), then Rome is the mother of an unholy mixture of the two. One of the things that impresses tourists visiting that city is its incredible religious history. It existed long before the Romans rose to power and today displays the ruins of many pagan religions, all of them received from Babylon. By the time Paul and other Christians got to Rome, the city had become not only the capital of a world empire--thus the center of civilization and the most important city in the world,--but also the center of pagan "Mystery Babylon" Religion. Satan had moved his spiritual headquarters from Babylon to Rome even before the birth of Christ.
When Constantine made his "confession of faith" in the fourth century (if indeed that is what it was), he turned over to the Christian leaders the temples of the pagans that, according to the official tour books of Rome, included:

The Greek divinities, Athena, that had become Minerva, Ares became Mars, Aphrodite became Venus. Apollo retained its Greek name, thus the Greek god of mythology became the Roman Olympus. The temple of Isis [straight from Babylon] was there, along with the Egyptian Campus Martius, many oriental divinities including Mithras, the Persian God of the Sun.2

The city of Rome around A.D. 320 was filled with temples, idols, and shrines to almost every god in the pantheon of pagan religions. Turning these temples over to the Christians proved to be the worst thing Constaand the worst thing to happen to the early church. It is said that the church retained much of the statuary in the pagan temples; it simply rededicated them to Christianity, then chiseled off the names of the pagan deities and replaced them with the names of the apostles, Jesus, and Mary. Gradually the pagan practices and teachings of Babylong began to worm their way into Christianity. These included prayers for the dead; making the sign of the cross, worship of saints and angels, instituting the mass, and worship of Mary--which in the church of Rome was followed by prayers directed TO MARY, leading to the 1950 doctrine of her assumption into heaven and in 1965 to the proclamation that Mary was the "Mother of the Church."3
As pagan teachings increased, biblical authority decreased. Just over one hundred years after Constantine, the brilliant Augustine came along with his brand of Greek humanism and introduced "man's wisdom" along with "God's wisdom," further paving the way for more pagan thought and practice. Although he did not intend it, his spiritualizing of Scripture eventually removed the Bible as the sole source of authority for correct doctrine. At the same time, the Scriptures were kept locked up in monsateries and museums, leaving Christians defenseless against the invasion of pagan and humanistic thought and practice. Consequently, the Dark Ages prevailed, and the Church of Rome became more pagan than Christian."
Had it not been for Wycliffe, Tyndale, and other valiant pre-Protestant heroes of the faith, Chritianity would have been destroyed, and Satan's Babylonian mysticism would have prevailed, effectively destroying true Christianity. Instead, because of the courageous efforts of a few Christian scholars--some within the [Roman] Catholic church itself, including many priests and bishops who disapproved of the infusion of pagan doctrine and practice, along with many splinter groups like the Moravians and Waldensians, who carefully adhered to the teachings of Scripture--the sixteenth century spawned the Protestant Reformation. . . . the Reformers called Christianity back to the Bible and at the same time condemned many of Rome's pagan practices, including selling indulgences, teaching the doctrine of purgatory, and praying to Mary.
In the Middle Ages and in premodern times true believers were subjected to martyrdom on an incredible scale. It is estimated that as many as 40 million persons were killed during that period when Babylonian mysticism controlled the church.
France, the most advanced bountry of the seventeenth century, is an example of the effects of Babylon on the seven-hilled city of Rome. Consider how the pope and [Roman] Catholic authorities worked with the [Roman] Catholic kings of France to produce the St. Bartholomew Square massacre, in which forth thousand born-again Christians were killed in a single day. That was followed by other massacres that eliminated up to 4 million huguenots who would be called evangelical Christians if they were living today.
[Qx paragraphing] Their destruction so angered skeptics like Voltaire and Rousseau that they became anti-Christian thinkers and began to propagate an atheistic socialism born out of French skepticism, which ultimately merged with German rationalism. Today their intellectual descendants champion a philosophy called "secular humanism."
However much we may agree with Pope Paul II on his stand against aborton, homosexuality, and other aspects of morality, we must oppose his promotion of unity among Christ-denying religions of the world. In 1986 he convened a conference for 130 religious leaders of the world in Iccese, Italy, to "pray for world peace." In attendance were Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, pantheists, the Dalai Lama, and a host of others who reject Jesus Christ. Who could they all pray to? They don't agree on who (or even what) God is or in whose name we should pray. Of one thing we are certain: You can't reject or ignore God's Son and still expect to have your prayers answered.

I encourage interested readers to get the book. It is well worth the time. I hope to excerpt some other moving parts in the next week or 3.