Obama will pray privately, as usual for him, says White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.  He will sign his proclamation of the National Day of Prayer but will let it go at that, reverting to how it was before GW Bush.

He did host a Passover Seder for family and friends in April, for a presidential first, but he took a pass on the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton, where 1,300 were expected.  Didn’t ask to come, said a Breakfast spokesman. 

If he had asked and did come to the Catholic breakfast, as GW Bush did, he would not have been allowed to speak, however, as Bush regularly did, because of

a 2004 directive from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops saying that public figures who have taken positions opposing Catholic doctrine should not be publicly honored. [! Except at Notre Dame?]

“We’d host him graciously, but we’d not give him a platform to speak,” [spokesman Joe] Cella said.

All major presidential candidates were invited to attend last year, he added, but none responded.

Catholic Obama-ites were invited this year — Biden and cabinet officers Sebelius, Donovan, Napolitano among them — but none responded, said Cella.

They might have gotten an earful from the keynote speaker, Archbishop Raymond Burke, formerly of St. Louis and now of the Vatican, who has recommended pro-choice Catholics such as Sebelius be denied Communion.

Justice Scalia was scheduled to speak.

Meanwhile, National Day of Prayer ceremonies were to be held Thursday morning in the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill — without Obama.