Cardinal Timothy Dolan put both his rhetorical gifts and his thorough knowledge of U.S. history to good use in giving the invocation at the 60th presidential inauguration. His public speaking skills receive plenty of attention, but his historical scholarship is often overlooked, even though Father John Tracy Ellis considered him one of his finest students. 

Cardinal Dolan’s deep grasp of American history helps to recall the sacrifices our ancestors made to build this country. It also helps to ensure we won’t forget our founding principles. 

But in this case, the cardinal’s expertise mostly reminds us of a practice without which our nation is surely doomed to fail.  

The practice in question is not limited to creed, party, race or class. It is a practice we once took for granted but now find embarrassing.  

The practice is prayer. 

Cardinal Dolan could have used the occasion to underscore the priorities in the president’s agenda that accord with Catholic teaching. He might have framed his words to suggest that the right man won the election — an interpretation some will take regardless. But his carefully chosen reference to Psalm 42 reveals a message that transcends politics, focusing instead on God’s sovereignty over all things:

“I am exalted among the nations, exalted on the earth.”  

This is a truth we can know only if we sit still for just one second — and only if, in the words of Abraham Lincoln cited by Cardinal Dolan, we take a moment to discover “the right as God gives us to see the right.”  

Though we often observe “moments of silence” to remember loved ones, tragic events and important causes, we have forgotten what to do in such moments. The archbishop of New York, drawing from Scripture, offered a reminder: “Be still and know that I am God!” (Psalm 42:11). In the same spirit, we must learn again to quiet our hearts, approaching one another “with malice toward none” and “with charity for all.” 

It is no coincidence that Cardinal Dolan chose four critical moments in U.S. history featuring key figures who led by prayer. 

Although we have no direct account of how George Washington prayed at Valley Forge, I find it nearly impossible to believe that he did not pray. Only the hardest of hearts would refuse to implore Divine assistance when soldiers are starving, freezing and dying of disease. Washington declared numerous days of thanksgiving and supplication to his Maker so that his troops would survive and prevail in the struggle.  

Lincoln’s second inaugural address, delivered to a nation brought to its knees by civil war, offered a profound reflection on prayer and divine Providence. 

To hammer the point home, Cardinal Dolan then turned to a figure few would identify as a man of prayer. General George Patton, embroiled in media controversy even as he faced a formidable surprise attack by the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge, exhorted his troops:

“Pray! Pray when fighting! Pray alone! Pray with others! Pray by night! Pray by day!”  

Perhaps, by choosing Patton, the cardinal wished to emphasize that no one is exempt from prayer if prayer is less about who we think we are and more about who God is, what his sovereignty entails, and how his strength prevails. 

Finally, Cardinal Dolan drew attention to a figure, on a day his nation set apart to honor him, who saw his work and that of his allies in the fight for racial equality as futile without a divine center: “Without God, our efforts turn to ashes.”  

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. included a version of these words in several sermons whose thesis was the contingency of the world and its entire dependence on God. King’s teaching on prayer was rooted in his conviction that “God minus the world equals God; the world minus God equals nothing” — words he attributed to William Temple, Anglican archbishop of Canterbury.  

We live in a precarious time. Many are bent on expelling God from every corner of public life. Many are determined to co-opt God for political gain. It is not as if we haven’t seen these attempts before. But Cardinal Dolan’s invocation suggests that such attempts do not endure in the ongoing American experiment. Time and time again in her young history our nation has had to discern the right course of action in extremely difficult circumstances. 

Cardinal Dolan’s invocation reminds us that the ways and means of achieving what is right and just will constantly shift. They will continually evolve in a rapidly changing world. The one thing that will not change, however — whether it is a matter of maintaining our freedom (Washington), our unity (Lincoln), our security (Patton) or our integrity (King) — is that we must pray, and pray fervently.  

Cardinal Dolan’s doctoral dissertation chronicled the life of Bishop Edwin O’Hara, a pioneer in bridging the spiritual and temporal realms. Among his notable efforts was his advocacy for Catholic social teaching in the public square, which challenged conventional boundaries and stirred debate.  

But a more overarching lesson emerges from his life. Heavily influenced by Pope Leo XIII’s monumental Rerum Novarum — an encyclical that stirred its own share of controversy — Bishop O’Hara was convinced that prayer must pervade every corner of our day-to-day lives.  

While some may cringe at the idea, the absence of an established religion in our nation and the freedom for Catholics to contribute to its well-being are precisely what make space for the preeminence of prayer in public life. Bishop O’Hara was not the first American prelate to assert that he “acknowledge[d] no civil authority but that of this republic.” Cardinal Dolan, a diligent scholar of American history, acknowledges the same principle in his own way. Far from distancing him from his country, this perspective allows the cardinal to affirm the preeminence of prayer as a cornerstone of our nation’s peace and prosperity — and embrace in his prayer everyone involved in the new administration.  

 

Daniel Gallagher is a lecturer in literature and philosophy at Ralston College in Savannah, Georgia.