Catholic voters should elect candidates who honor Catholic values not just candidates who are Catholic by name, an ad, which recently ran in USA Today, suggests.

The ad, sponsored by a group called Catholic Answers, ran in the newspaper’s Oct. 12 edition, was titled in big and bold letters: “Voter's Guide for Serious Catholics.”

"Do not vote for candidates simply because they declare themselves to be Catholic," the ad says. "Unfortunately, many self-described Catholic candidates reject basic Catholic moral teaching."

"This voter's guide helps you cast your vote in an informed manner consistent with Catholic moral teaching," the guide says. "It helps you avoid choosing candidates who endorse policies that cannot be reconciled with moral norms that used to be held by all Christians."

The guide identified “five current issues which concern actions that are intrinsically evil and must never be promoted by law.” The issues are: Abortion, Euthanasia, Embryonic Stem-cell Research, Human Cloning, and Homosexual Marriage. Readers were told it is a “serious sin” to support any of the listed actions.

The guide was also printed in a small booklet available along with an online version of the full-page ad on the group’s Web site, www.catholic.com.