The Republican Party and President Bush conducted an unprecedented outreach to Catholics in their last campaign.

We warmly support that effort, insofar as it makes the GOP more friendly to Catholics … and not just vice versa. We were glad that Bush supported Catholic positions on abortion, cloning, stem-cell research and homosexual marriage. We might point out that he may have done even better if he had followed the Church's recommendations on war.

Catholic voters supported his efforts, too. For the first time since Ronald Reagan, the majority of the Catholic vote went for the Republican presidential candidate.

But the GOP's hold on its Catholic supporters remains tenuous, at best. If Republicans want to win Mass-going Catholics for good (as distinct from merely self-identified Catholics, whose votes aren't as predictable), they need to embrace the pro-family issues Mass-going Catholics care about.

That's because — as we pointed out after Bush first took office four years ago —the party-identification of Catholics with Democrats is very deeply rooted.

For most people, commitment to a party isn't based exclusively on a reasoned assessment of issues; it isn't even primarily that. Party identification is learned as a child and colors our outlook on national events.

The win-and-loss coverage our media gives to national elections only heightens our lack of objectivity. We root for our candidate and cheer his victory or mourn his defeat. Our support for our party becomes as unrelated to rationality as our support for our favorite football team.

Thus, many Catholics consider themselves either Democrats or Republicans for reasons which may have little to do with the parties as they actually operate.

Ask a Catholic why he's a Democrat, and he'll tell you that the Democratic Party is the party that favors the poor, is more likely to oppose warmongering and the death penalty, and is better for the environment.

Yet Democrats block school vouchers for poor children. And poverty rose under Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs, fell in the '80s, and rose again in the '90s, says the Census Bureau. Democratic presidents dropped the A-Bomb, took us to Vietnam, got us involved in conflicts all over the globe for the eight years of the Clinton Administration, and brought us the first federal death sentence in memory. Democrats overwhelmingly approved of the war in Iraq, voting for it almost unanimously. And it took the senior editor of the liberal magazine The New Republic to point out that President Bush's plans for the environment to point out that President Bush's plans for the environment were almost identical to Clinton's.

Then ask another Catholic why she's Republican, and she'll tell you it's the party that favors life, is better for Catholic education, is more likely to enforce decency standards in media and schools, and is more willing to give faith a voice in public places.

Yet Republican presidents gave us a pro-abortion Supreme Court majority, and Republican Congresses have passed only a few pro-life bills. Republicans have all but eliminated voucher proposals from education plans. The party's rising stars are prominent secularists like Arnold Schwarzeneggar, Rudolph Giuliani and John McCain.

Given all this, we shouldn't ask which party we should support, but which party we are more likely to change.

Today's Democratic Party platform, heartbreakingly, calls abortion “a fundamental constitutional liberty.” Whatever the party's strengths elsewhere, this posture is antithetical to the Catholic faith.

And the total and unapologetic way that Democratic leaders in Washington apply this principle is frightening. They have defended partial-birth abortion by saying that a baby isn't human until parents bring it home. They opposed making Laci Peterson's son a murder victim along with his mother. Sen. John Kerry even opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which would make it illegal to kill a baby who is accidentally born alive during a botched abortion.

Millions of women will suffer for the rest of their lives because they acted on the Democratic Party's abortion logic.

Republicans, yes, have taken a stand for life in some significant ways. But too many questionable nominations to top spots will make the party look afraid to capitalize on their pro-life support.

Catholics need to start paying attention to what's going on in Washington right now. One party took us for granted for decades, and is only now learning what a mistake that was.

We don't want another party to learn to count on our support no matter what they do.