Anyone constructing a list of the big losers on Tuesday would probably include the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops. Will that fact be candidly addressed when the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops meets next week in Baltimore?

After a presidential campaign in which it was widely perceived that the dominant message from the bishops was that Catholics were morally obliged not to vote for a candidate supporting abortion rights, exit polls show that Catholics voted 52 percent to 45 percent for Senator Barack Obama. That was seven percentage points more than the Catholic vote in 2004 for Senator John Kerry, a fellow Catholic.

Hispanic Catholics, a group the bishops often hail as representing the future of the church in the United States, led the way. Latinos voted 67 percent for Mr. Obama, 16 percentage points more than their vote for Mr. Kerry. Latino Catholics, usually more Democratic than Protestant Latinos, almost certainly voted for the Democratic nominee at an even higher rate.

Exit poll figures for young Catholics are not yet available, but much information indicates that they also voted at high rates for Mr. Obama.

If the bishops sweat a little over these figures next week, the reason won’t be worry about their political prowess but about their pastoral and moral effectiveness. By appearing to tie their moral stance on abortion so closely to a particular political choice, have they in fact undermined their moral persuasiveness on that issue as well as their pastoral effectiveness generally?

In 2004, a distinct minority of bishops established the public posture of the church by excoriating the abortion rights advocacy of Senator Kerry and in some cases urging that he or even Catholics who voted for him should be barred from Communion.

The result was disarray among the bishops and a backlash among a considerable number of Catholics. To keep that from reoccurring in 2008, the bishops painstakingly reframed the brochure they issue every four years to guide Catholics in contemplating how to vote.

Responding to complaints that previous statements insufficiently highlighted abortion among the church’s many concerns, the new version emphasized that issues involving “intrinsically evil” actions could not be equated morally with others. Abortion was the prime example, but euthanasia, torture, genocide, unjust war and racism were similarly labeled.

Catholics, the bishops taught, could never vote for a candidate because he or she supported any of these evils but only despite such support—and only for proportionately grave reasons.