Anti-abortion Catholics can support pro-choice candidates, as long as they agree with the candidate on a range of other issues. That pronouncement in an Italian magazine from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's top spokesman on Catholic teachings, went unnoticed in the din of presidential election-year politics. But it could reverberate in a close election, which pits President George W. Bush, a conservative Christian abortion opponent, against Democratic Sen. John Kerry, a Catholic who favors abortion rights. Catholics account for about one-fourth of the Michigan electorate and are evenly split between Kerry and Bush, said pollster Ed Sarpolus of the Lansing-based...