The US bishops, meeting this week in Baltimore, approved an election guide called "Faithful Citizenship".

It stresses the moral imperative to evaluate political candidates according to their position on marriage and abortion.

It addresses a broad range of issues in Catholic social teaching, including protecting immigrants and the environment, fighting racism and poverty, and opposing the death penalty.

But the bishops said they consider opposition to gay marriage and abortion rights paramount in this US presidential election season and beyond.

Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego said the document was "gravely hobbled" and did not reflect the Pope's priorities.

Bishop McElroy argued that the document, a re-working of an 84-page treatise first written in 2007, should be scrapped.

"Specifically, I think the Pope is telling us that alongside the issues of abortion and euthanasia — which are central aspects of our commitment to transform this world — poverty and the degradation of the Earth are also central," Bishop McElroy said.

"But this document keeps to the structure of the worldview of 2007. It does not put those there."

Bishop McElroy argued that the new draft still "provides a warrant for those who will misuse this document outside this room to exclude poverty and exclude the environment as key issues and say they are secondary, and cite this document as they have done for the last two election cycles".

Bishop McElroy was supported by a number of other bishops, some of whom were also dismayed by the number of times the draft mentioned same-sex marriage, given that the US Supreme Court has ruled on that issue.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington said that while the document is not perfect, it is still good.

Cardinal Wuerl said that by supporting it "we will have something done this year and not run the risk of trying to do something in the midst of an election campaign".

The document was approved by 210-21 with five abstentions.

Sources

• Associated Press
• Religion News Service
• Image: National Catholic Reporter

Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego told the National Catholic Reporter that the "theology of mercy is saying is that the essential attribute of God in relation to us - and for us to understand who is God - is that of mercy".

"And that God is innately merciful and can do no other than to be merciful, because that's at the core of who God is."

That understanding of God, Bishop McElroy said, "will be the prism through which so much of the discussion occurs" at the synod.

But the bishop said there will also be a tension at the synod between mercy and a kind of "cheap grace" that "leads to a sense of complacency and not trying to struggle with, wrestle with, the challenge of the Gospel in our lives".

"I think that is the central dilemma that this synod is going to have to deal with, in terms of diverse opinions," he said.

"How do you emphasise the mercy of God at every key point and at the same time not let it become a distorted sense of mercy that legitimates and supports complacency?"

Bishop McElroy noted a desire among many US Catholics for the Church to "banish judgmentalism" of people.

Something that may help bishops at the synod in their discussions, Bishop McElroy said, is the theological notion of graduality.

"What that says is that many times, people in their lives cannot embrace the fullness of the Gospel at a given moment," the bishop said.

"They need to take steps toward it."

The synod's special secretary, Archbishop Bruno Forte, last month said: "We want to be a Church" that "does not hurl anathemas, but stays at the side of the people . . . We want to innovate the modes of proclamation, not its content."

One of several key issues for the synod, he said, will be a discussion of allowing those who have divorced and remarried outside the Church to become "godfathers or godmothers, catechists, extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist".

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Catholic World News
• Image: Huffington Post