Thirty local activists who want to mobilize Catholic voters around the full range of Catholic social issues met yesterday to raise awareness.

"We are trying to influence the Catholic vote for the common good," said Lois Campbell, the local field organizer for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, which sponsored the meeting.

The group plans to run phone banks to urge Catholics to vote with many issues in mind.

The alliance believes that Catholics have been frustrated by partisan politics, with the Republican Party claiming opposition to abortion and the Democratic Party claiming support for a social safety net. The group says it is trying to get Catholics to base their electoral decisions on all of these issues.

It has produced a "Platform for the Common Good," based on the preamble to the U.S. Constitution and on a document of the U.S. Catholic bishops, "Faithful Citizenship."

The platform says: "Too many today have lost a sense of a consistent ethic of life, which is harmed in many ways, including by poverty, abortion and capital punishment. Internationally, our economic system has disproportionately benefitted large corporations and their shareholders while millions of U.S. workers and laborers, family farmers in the global south and others often struggle in poverty."

"Catholic social thought is the best kept secret in the Catholic Church," said Christina Astorga, director of the Spiritan Center for the Study of Catholic Social Thought at Duquesne University, which hosted the gathering.

The main speaker was Chris Korzen, executive director of Catholics United, a like-minded organization with more liberty to lobby. His group produced a voter guide comparing John McCain and Barack Obama on 10 areas of public policy.

In 2004, there was little news media interest in covering what the Catholic Church teaches, he said. The emphasis was on activists who claimed it was immoral to vote for one candidate or the other based on one or two issues. "Faithful Citizenship" says that opposition to abortion is foundational and must be seriously taken into account. But it also says that a Catholic may, for serious reasons, vote for a candidate who supports abortion if that is not the reason for supporting the candidate.

"Catholics are not by definition Republicans or Democrats," Mr. Korzen said.

"What is more important than who we vote for is why we vote for them."

Those at the meeting were already activists on issues ranging from hunger to public transportation to immigration to torture. Many were nuns.

The Rev. Frank Almade, who had organized diocesan seminars on "Faithful Citizenship," said the rise and apparent fall of the religious right has created a new opportunity for Catholics.

"They identified only a few issues [of importance] ... but they created an opening for Catholics and others. People now realize that you can speak on public issues from a faith perspective, but we have a better message. I think this is a new moment. The Catholic understanding of the common good now has a chance for a hearing," he said.

He advised the group not to expect priests to preach on this from the pulpit, because it is too easy to appear partisan when there are only two candidates.

Sister Barbara Finch, a social worker, urged the group to think beyond November.

"This is about promoting a positive way of life. It goes beyond the election," she said.