BOSTON (AP) – The lobbying arm of the state’s four Roman Catholic dioceses is sending letters to every parish in the state, urging Catholics to let lawmakers who did not vote to ban same-sex marriage know of their “profound disappointment.”

At the same time, the letter encourages the “highest praise” for lawmakers who opposed same-sex marriage during the March constitutional convention when the Massachusetts Legislature voted narrowly to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2006 that would ban same-sex marriage while allowing civil unions for same-sex couples.

While the letter from the Massachusetts Catholic Conference does not endorse particular candidates, or compare incumbents to challengers on the same-sex marriage issue, it comes just five months before all 200 seats in the Legislature are up for grabs, and is consistent with other recent efforts by the Archbishop of Boston and the bishops of Fall River, Worcester and Springfield to influence politics.

The letter is being sent to all 710 Catholic parishes in the state. It assesses each lawmaker based on his or her votes during the Constitutional Convention, and urges priests to “share this information with your parishioners through your parish bulletin and other means.”

“We leave it up to each pastor to disseminate or not disseminate our analysis of votes; it’s his prerogative,” Gerald D’Avolio, executive director of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, told The Boston Globe. “I think it’s a matter of right that we let people ... know the position of the people who represent them.”

The letters are tailored to each parish, telling priests the votes of lawmakers who represent the district where the parish is located. The letter was dated in May, but still has not arrived in some parishes.

While the letter is seen by some as an attempt to influence the November elections, the Massachusetts Catholic Conference says that is untrue.

“I think the Massachusetts Catholic Conference is itching to get its tax exemption revoked,” said Robert Boston, a spokesman for Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “It would be difficult to look at this as anything other than a command of who to vote for and who to vote against, and the IRS code is very clear that churches and other religious bodies may not engage in that type of activity.”

There is no effort to influence the elections, said Daniel Avila, the associate director for policy and research at the conference. The letter was simply sent soon after the same-sex marriage issue.

The state’s bishops have been outspoken in their opposition to same-sex marriage, which became legal Massachusetts in May after the state’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled in November that barring same-sex couples from marriage was unconstitutional.

More than two-thirds of the state’s lawmakers are Roman Catholic, and many voted not to try and ban same-sex marriage. About half of the Bay State’s residents are Catholic.

The letter is more proof of the unusual zeal the bishops have committed to the issue, said Maurice Cunningham, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Boston, who is studying the Catholic church’s role in the same-sex marriage debate.

“The outreach to people in the pews has been more intensive than anything I can recall,” he said.