In case you have been living in a cave on another planet for the last few months and haven't heard about it, on November 2 there is to be a presidential election in the United States, pitting George W. Bush against John Kerry. That's not the bad news. The bad news is that presumably one of them will be elected.

In one way, I wish I could vote for John Kerry. On foreign policy I think Kerry is better than Bush. Of course, that is not saying much given that in my opinion Bush is one of the worst presidents in history on foreign policy. On economic and fiscal policy, much as I hate to say it, Kerry is not measurably much worse than Bush. Both candidates plan on running large annual deficits throughout the next four years, which means both favor higher taxes across the board at some point, whatever they may say now. I even like Kerry's personality better than that of Bush, and I know that is unusual. Bush has a certain everyman quality and "regular guy" charm that is an advantage for him politically, but that kind of thing just does not appeal to me. I don't want a regular guy as president. I want an achiever, someone who is above-average, someone who is obviously intelligent and knowledgeable and intellectually curious, and someone who knows how to pronounce "nuclear." (I'm not saying that Kerry entirely fits the bill on all that--and of course, since these men are politicians, both of their public personalities may be fake to a significant extent.)

I say all these things to demonstrate that I am not a Bush fan, and I am no reflexive Republican. I have voted for Democrats before in gubernatorial and congressional races. Up to a point, I would be quite willing to believe that I can vote for Kerry. There is one problem. Like John Kerry, I am Catholic (although, in the interest of complete disclosure, I was never an altar boy). Unlike Kerry, as a Catholic I believe that nothing can excuse me from accepting in every area of life the truths proclaimed on behalf of Jesus Christ by the Catholic Church. God knows that every day I fail in various ways to live out these truths fully, but acceptance of these truths still has a lot of consequences in a person's life. One of those consequences is that I cannot vote for John Kerry for president.

I will not analyze in detail here the issues surrounding the pro-abortion position of Kerry and his absurd claim that he is still in good standing with the Catholic Church in spite of that position. Whether Kerry is a Catholic in good standing and whether he should be allowed to receive the Eucharist are of course completely separate from the question of whether it is permissible for Catholics to vote for him, so for the moment let's focus on this last question. In focusing on this question, it is important to remember that the fact that Kerry claims to be "personally" pro-life is irrelevant. This claim is not particularly credible, but even if Kerry himself sincerely believes what he is saying, that does not change the fact that he has made it clear that if elected president he would be as pro-abortion as possible. We are voting on whether he should be president, not on what we think he really believes on the inside. It is impossible for us to know what he really believes on the inside, nor is it necessary for us to know that in order to make a voting decision. This is a presidential election, not a referendum on the conscience of John Kerry, and in this presidential election a vote for Kerry is a vote for a candidate who is unambiguously pro-abortion.

Some Catholics may feel that the Church cannot or should not tell them how to vote. While it is true that the Catholic Church does not endorse individual political candidates, the Church most certainly can tell Catholics how to vote. More to the point, the Church can tell Catholics how not to vote. Voting is an action, one in which the voter makes a choice. A person's vote, like other choices, can be moral or immoral, and the Church can and should proclaim moral principles that Catholics must follow in voting. Such moral principles may in some cases exclude certain candidates entirely from the range of people for whom a Catholic may vote in good conscience. It is even possible that in some cases these principles may leave Catholics with only one candidate for whom they may vote in a particular political race.

There is nothing overly intrusive or restrictive about the application of Catholic moral teaching to the act of voting. Americans may find it difficult to swallow Catholic teaching in this area, because Americans instinctively reject connections between religion and government. However, the Catholic Church does not acknowledge a disconnect between religion and any area of life. The Church teaches in this world on behalf of Jesus Christ, and there is no place we ever get to in our lives, whether it be the voting booth or any place else, where we can say "Now I may ignore the voice of Jesus; Jesus has no place here." The Church may not wield temporal power in the way that she once did, but she has not surrendered one ounce of her moral authority over any area, including areas related to the public order. Catholic voters have an obligation to follow the teaching of the Church in voting as in all other matters. In this election year, obviously, the primary issue on which the teaching of the Church is in question is that of abortion, and the moral permissibility of Catholics voting for pro-abortion candidates.

Some of the points made by Catholic leaders in various attempts to address this issue of Catholics voting for pro-abortion candidates have struck me as unconvincing. For example, the fact that abortion is intrinsically immoral and war is not does not seem to me to prove that abortion is the issue that must decide a person's vote. We are not talking about war in the abstract here; we are talking about the Iraq war and the potential for other wars more or less like it being started by the United States in the future. The Iraq war was an unjust war, and the way in which the Bush administration started that war and the rhetoric they have used about war ever since September 11 make clear that the administration is ready and willing, if not eager, to start further unjust "preemptive" wars.

Preemptive wars would appear to be problematic if judged through the understanding of the just war doctrine articulated by the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Furthermore, it is perhaps misleading even to refer to the Iraq war as preemptive, because no real evidence was ever offered that Iraq presented a significant threat to be preempted. Rather, the Iraq war, whatever the real reasons for it may have been, was simply a war of choice. Clearly, such a war is even more gravely immoral than a true preemptive war would be.

Therefore, it seems to me fair to say that the Bush administration advocates a willingness to engage in kinds of war that are gravely immoral. (At the same time, Kerry has insisted during the campaign that he too would be willing to engage in preemptive wars. He originally did not oppose the Iraq war, and more recently he has consistently criticized the war on prudential, not moral, grounds.) Just because some wars may not be immoral does not make preemptive wars or wars of choice any less immoral. Certainly it is important to distinguish between things that are intrinsically immoral (such as abortion), and things that are not (such as war), but I am not sure that this distinction in and of itself would always necessarily have to determine how a Catholic votes. However, there is still an obvious difference between the evils of abortion and unjust war in our world, and the difference should have clear significance for the Catholic voter. While it may seem inadequate to just compare numbers in cases like these, it is also important that people grasp on some level the kinds of moral catastrophes we are dealing with here. There are no reliable figures on the number of people killed in the Iraq war, but the highest estimates I have seen have been around 100,000. Let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that this is actually an accurate number. This obviously is an enormous tragedy, and that number should make us all think very seriously about the moral implications of American foreign policy. That number is also less than the number of innocent children killed by abortion in the United States every month. It is less than 1/4 of 1% of the number of innocent children killed by abortion in the United States since Roe v. Wade. Statistically, it is likely that at least ten to fifteen unborn babies have been killed in the United States since you started reading this column. That does not include the uncounted early abortions done privately through the use of abortifacients, or the killing of embryos created for research purposes. The Iraq war is a terrible thing, but abortion in the U.S. has killed more children than the total number of people killed by the Stalin government in the Soviet Union, and several times more than the total number of people killed by the Hitler government in Nazi Germany.

There has been a lot of talk among Catholics about the fact that one can vote for a candidate who advocates a policy which favors an intrinsic evil, as long as one has "proportionate reasons" for doing so. However, both human reason and Catholic teaching tell us that abortion is an attack on innocent human life, and therefore an evil of the gravest kind. If one accepts that truth, then the shocking extent of the evil of abortion in our nation today makes it impossible to have any proportionate reason for choosing a pro-abortion candidate. A number of Catholic bishops have indicated this, but the truth would be the same whether they had spoken out or not. These bishops only proclaimed moral principles that already existed. It is morally unacceptable for Catholics, and indeed for anyone, to choose to vote for a candidate who considers this massive destruction of life an American constitutional right, and wishes to exclude from the judicial system all those who disagree.

While Kerry is unquestionably pro-abortion, some people may consider it inaccurate and hypocritical for President Bush to call himself "pro-life," considering his rush to war and the fact that his opposition to abortion has never been strong. This is certainly an understandable position, and I would be the first to admit that Bush is not, in the strictest sense, pro-life. However, just as this is not a referendum on the personal conscience of Kerry, this is also not a referendum on the personal conscience of Bush. It should go without saying that neither candidate is someone who should be chosen by Catholics as a model of morality in public life. Nevertheless, Bush is a choice in this election that is different from Kerry on the issue of abortion. This is not a race between two candidates who would probably have the same effect in office on the issue of abortion. Bush has never endorsed and supported legalized mass slaughter on anything like the level Kerry has. Even if we assume, just for the sake of argument, that Bush has no personal anti-abortion principles at all, political realities alone dictates that the anti-abortion cause at a minimum will lose less ground if he is in the White House than it will if Kerry is in the White House.

I don't think I'm naive about Bush. I don't expect Roe v. Wade to be overturned while Bush is in office. However, a Kerry presidency will mean that pro-life people will practically be excluded from the executive branch. It will mean that the executive branch will push for more taxpayer funding of abortion and embryonic stem cell research at every opportunity. It will mean that anyone who does not believe in an unrestricted constitutional right to abortion will be excluded from consideration for any open positions in the judicial branch. It will very likely mean that an uncompromisingly pro-abortion majority will be entrenched on the Supreme Court for at least the next decade and probably more, no matter who is elected in 2008. Let us not delude ourselves. Bush may not be fully pro-life, but Kerry is nothing short of an apostle for legal, unrestricted, government-funded abortion. He will not compromise, and barring a miracle he will not change. He will do everything he can to let the killing continue. Catholics can pray for a miracle, but we must vote based on the reality that confronts us now. If terrorism and foreign policy were truly the most important issues of our time and place, I would vote for John Kerry. However, notwithstanding the propaganda from the American government and both political parties, these are not the most important issues of our day. The most important issue in the United States today, as it has been for over thirty years, is abortion. Given the realities of the abortion issue in the United States today, a Catholic who chooses to vote for John Kerry is voting in a way that objectively violates the moral law.

For those Catholics who are thinking of voting for John Kerry, I would beg you to reconsider. Prayerfully think about what you would be voting for. Even if John Kerry is regarded as some sort of peace candidate, an idea which frankly his own record and statements do not support, that still cannot make up for his devotion to abortion. In 1917 Lenin said that Russia had bad leadership, and that Russia should get out of World War I (a far bloodier and more senseless war than the one in Iraq). Lenin was right on those two things, but wrong on almost everything else, and he began over seventy years of Communist rule in Russia. Even though Lenin was right about the war, supporting Lenin was wrong in 1917, and voting for Kerry is wrong now. If some Catholics do not want to vote for George Bush, I certainly understand that. There is nothing that says you must vote for Bush, and if you can't stomach voting for him, then you may wish to investigate whether there is a pro-life third party presidential candidate on the ballot in your state. If there is not, and you still cannot bring yourself to vote for Bush, then please remember that you may leave any race on the ballot blank, and your ballot will still be counted for any other race in which you do cast a vote. As a last resort, not voting in the presidential election is infinitely preferable to voting for Kerry, the standard-bearer for the pro-abortion movement in 2004.

As I just said, although Catholics morally must not vote for Kerry, we certainly are not obligated to vote for any particular candidate. That said, I think all people, and especially Catholics, should think seriously about the disastrous consequences of a President John Kerry. The only realistic alternative is another term with George Bush, and while I certainly don't look forward to more of the same, Bush is clearly the lesser of two evils from a moral perspective. I don't like it, but the truth is there are no other options on the table. Ronald Reagan is not coming back from the dead to save us. (Reagan certainly wasn't perfect either, but doesn't Dubya make you miss the Gipper?) In 2004, Bush is what we have. Hopefully we will have something better in the future, but right now Kerry is undoubtedly something worse. That is why on November 2 I will take a deep breath, then grit my teeth and force myself to vote for George W. Bush. God bless America. And God, by all means bless John Kerry too, but if it's not too much trouble, please keep him out of the presidency.