Still Running Off at the Keyboard

The Catholic bloc is the key swing vote in this year's election that will decide the next president of the United States - and shape our destiny in this watershed moment in history. Catholics must support Sen. John McCain....

Polls reveal many Catholics remain undecided. They are also evenly divided: Catholic conservatives back Mr. McCain; Catholic progressives champion Sen. Barack Obama. "Social justice" Catholics believe Mr. Obama is their man: In their view, he advocates the "broader teachings" of the church. He puts national health care, a cleaner environment, ending the Iraq war and devoting more resources to the poor above the "single" issue of abortion.

However, this reasoning violates church doctrine. Pope Benedict XVI has made it crystal-clear that abortion is the seminal moral challenge of our time. It is not simply a "single" issue like guns, taxes or immigration. It is equivalent to the Jewish question of the 1930s: Will we allow an entire category of people - the unborn - to be murdered because they are viewed as less than human?

Pope Benedict rightly argues that legalized abortion asserts "the law of the jungle over the rule of law"; the triumph of power, death and destruction over the weakest members of our society. Abortion abrogates the most fundamental of all rights: The right to exist in God's image and according to His divine plan. This is why the church has explicitly - and repeatedly - stated that abortion is mass murder. Catholics have a primary moral obligation to outlaw it. Abortion is state-sanctioned infanticide; abortion trumps all other concerns.