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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- Shortly after a priest's opening prayer and a screening of a short film on John McCain's faith, Sen. Sam Brownback stepped to the microphone and didn't waste words.

"Just to get to the whole meat of the matter, the Catholic vote is a swing vote," the Kansas lawmaker and Catholic convert said at a Catholic reception during this week's Republican National Convention.

"It is a critical vote in swing states," he said. "It is a vote we can win -- but only if we work to win it."

Catholics are shaping up to be the battleground religious vote of 2008. Recent polls show McCain and Democrat Barack Obama neck and neck among white Catholics -- a better indicator of swing voters because Hispanic Catholics lean Democratic. With an estimated 47 million U.S. Catholic voters, the stakes are huge.

Obama and McCain want to energize Catholics who line up with them ideologically. But the real prize is the increasing number of Catholics who don't identify with either major party.

The largest bloc of Catholic voters -- 41 percent -- identify as independents, up 11 percentage points from 2004, according to February polling for Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

Neither presidential candidate lines up precisely with the breadth of Catholic teaching, but Catholic organizers for McCain and Obama are making the case that their man comes closest.

Former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, co-chair of the National Catholics for McCain Committee, said in an interview that the McCain campaign is staging a "very aggressive" Catholic get-out-the-vote effort, dispatching surrogates to mobilize lay people at parishes and speak before anti-abortion groups and Catholic fraternal organizations.

In St. Paul, the independent Catholic Working Group, which works for Republican causes, invited Catholic McCain backers to three events: a Mass and reception at the Cathedral of St. Paul, a panel discussion on judicial philosophy and the forum at a hotel where Brownback and other Republican figures lauded McCain and lashed out at Obama.

One Catholic McCain supporter, Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, spoke almost exclusively about abortion at various events this week, hammering home the claim that Obama would be "the abortion president."

Brownback highlighted McCain's stances against abortion rights and gay marriage. He lauded McCain running mate Sarah Palin, whose star turn this week has energized conservative Catholics and evangelicals alike.

But Brownback also challenged the notion that Democrats are more in line with Catholic social justice concerns, suggesting that McCain's opposition to torture and support of comprehensive immigration reform provide an opening.

"I am not conceding the social ground," said Brownback, a former presidential candidate. "We are a pro-life and whole-life party."

Getting out the Catholic vote was clearly on Brownback's mind.

"It is no gimme vote," he said. "This is one you've got to dig in and work on a parish-by-parish basis, get the list, identify people that'll get out and vote and then get them out to vote."

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