Madison: A pamphlet produced by the Madison Catholic Diocese has a political watchdog group saying they need to register as a political group.

All churches are allowed to take positions on referendum issues and talk about that with their members, but one group says when they spend money and tell people how to vote they need to register with the state.

The pamplet in question is titled Marriage Matters. It was produced and paid for by the Madison Catholic Diocese and 110,000 copies were distributed to churches around the area.

"It's an education visual about the Catholic teaching on marriage and it's implications," says Bishop Robert Morlino.

Morlino says the Diocese has a duty to inform their members how they should vote on the gay marriage amendment. "If we believe what we believe about marriage then we vote yes."

"The diocese is free to campaign for the amendment, that's not the problem," argues Mike McCabe of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

McCabe says the problem is that the fliers tell parishioners to vote yes. The church is allowed to produce the fliers, but if they do they need to register with the state elections board and disclose how much money was spent. "If they spend money to directly tell people to vote yes then they need to publicly disclose those activities."

"I don't see that we've violated any law whatsoever." Bishop Morlino admits the fliers have 'political implications,' but he doesn't think the section telling parishioners to talk to friends and neighbors and write editorials to be electioneering. "We are asking people to do this, recommending people do it. If I had some way of forcing people to do it that would be electioneering."

McCabe says another issue is these fliers are being distributed outside the church, another no-no without registering. "If it didn't say vote yes, if it just discussed marriage, then they would have been free to distribute that anywhere."