ASHINGTON - In a debate with GOP rivals last December, Governor George W. Bush of Texas said his favorite philosopher was Jesus Christ. In a debate with Al Gore Tuesday night, he quoted from a favorite writer, Pope John Paul II.
The papal moment wasn't obvious to the vast majority of Americans watching the debate. Bush didn't actually mention the pontiff by name, but when Bush said that as president he would discourage abortion and promote ''a culture of life,'' the phrase had a familiar ring to churchgoing Roman Catholics, who hear the pope's words repeated week after week at Sunday Mass.
In a 1995 encyclical titled ''Evangelium Vitae,'' or ''The Gospel of Life,'' Pope John Paul II introduced the phrase that he has often repeated: ''In our present social context, marked by a dramatic struggle between the culture of life and the culture of death, there is need to develop a deep critical sense capable of discerning true values and authentic needs.''
Scholars say the document is a passionate argument for the church to turn away from what it views as the life-destroying elements of modern time - abortion, capital punishment, poverty, and violence - and lift up the human spirit with compassion and love.
The stakes in wooing Catholics are high. The percentage of Catholic voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Missouri is large - 20 to 30 percent - and those states are pivotal to the election.
''When George W. Bush speaks about the abortion issue, he does so in authentically Catholic terms, and he has embraced a very Catholic notion of the ethic of life of which abortion is just part of a whole that includes issues like euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide,'' said a Bush adviser, who asked not to be named.
During last Tuesday's televised debate between Bush and Vice President Al Gore in Boston, moderator Jim Lehrer asked Bush if, as president, he would try to overturn the federal Food and Drug Administration's approval of RU-486, an abortion-inducing drug. Bush has said he opposes abortion except in cases of rape, incest, and saving the life of the mother.
Bush said that while he was disappointed in the FDA ruling, he did not think a president could undo it. His worry, he said, was that the pill would cause more women to have abortions, while his goal was to make abortions more rare and to ''promote a culture of life.''
''Surely this nation can come together to promote the value of life,'' Bush said. ''Surely we can fight off these laws that will encourage doctors or allow doctors to take the lives of our seniors. Sure, we can work together to create a culture of life so some of these youngsters who feel like they can take a neighbor's life with a gun will understand that that's not the way America is meant to be.
''And surely we can find common ground to reduce the number of abortions in America,'' Bush said, adding that he hoped the Food and Drug Administration had made sure RU-486 was safe for women.
John Green, a specialist on religion and politics at the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron, heard in Bush's rhetoric ''a conscious effort to reach out to Catholics,'' both traditional ones, who rigidly adhere to the church's antiabortion teachings, and to more liberal Catholics, who support a woman's right to choose but are nonetheless disturbed by the issue.
''Bush didn't want to come across as having a very strict right-to-life position, because that would potentially alienate some voters,'' Green said. ''At the same time, by identifying with the culture of life, Bush is reaching out to centrist Catholics who respect the church's teaching and don't find abortion very appealing.
''It's quite a clever strategy, if he can carry it off,'' Green said.
Green noted that conservative Catholics, many disillusioned by the social liberalism of the Democrats, are playing a large role in GOP politics this year, and officeholders who are Catholic, such as Governor Frank Keating of Oklahoma, have profoundly influenced Bush's thinking and helped shape what he calls his ''compassionate conservative'' agenda.
''I suspect this is not so much a strategy as it is an expression of Bush's temperament, which is not sharply combative,'' said John Langan, the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin professor of Catholic social thought at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics. ''By trying to maintain the support of the antiabortion people and show he is flexible to the other side, he is hoping to position himself as far less rigid than Gore.''
The vice president has said unequivocally that he supports abortion rights and the FDA's decision to approve RU-486. In Tuesday's debate, he said that as president he would work to uphold the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 that legalized abortion, while Bush would make court appointments aimed at overturning the landmark ruling.
''Here's the difference,'' Gore said. ''[Bush] trusts government to order a woman to do what it thinks she ought to do. I trust women to make the decisions that affect their lives, their destinies, and their bodies. I think a woman's right to choose ought to be protected and defended.''
Even with the weight of the church's antiabortion stance, Catholic voters are as closely divided as the rest of the country on the issue. (A recent ABC News-Washington Post poll showed that 47 percent of Americans think RU-486 should be legal; 45 percent say it should be illegal, a statistical tie.) The difference is among Catholics who attend church regularly: polls show that they are much more likely than non-attendant Catholics to want abortion outlawed.
Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that supports access to abortion, said she has been surprised by the lack of outcry from antiabortion groups to Bush's answer on RU-486. ''My jaw fell when he said the president did not have power to regulate the drug,'' Kissling said. ''A true-blue antiabortion candidate at least would have pretended he could do more.''
Bush is pursuing a risky, middle-ground abortion strategy, Kissling said, because he has been ''sold a bill of goods'' by conservative Catholic advisers who think centrist Catholics can be moved into the GOP column by what she called a ''culture-of-life pitch'' on the issue.
''First, most Catholics don't even know what he is talking about,'' Kissling said. ''Second, Catholics who know and care about the culture of life understand that Bush has no credibility to talk about it because he is `Mr. Death Penalty' in Texas, and that is completely inconsistent with the ethic of life.''
