When the nation's Roman Catholic bishops approved a master plan a year ago in Dallas to wrest their church from its debilitating sexual abuse crisis, they hoped that they had reached a turning point in what one ranking prelate called their "long and sorrowful journey."
But as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops prepares to open its spring meeting in St. Louis on Thursday, key figures in the church said that in important ways the bishops have not come very far.
Despite progress in implementing some of the reforms called for a year ago, the overall image of bishops themselves remains as bleak as ever.
Developments this week, including the resignation of the plain-spoken chairman of the bishops' National Review Board on sexual abuse and the felony arrest of the bishop of Phoenix in a fatal hit-and-run driving incident, have only added to their problems.
"I don't think the bishops have even begun to rehabilitate their corporate image," said Father Richard P. McBrien, author and professor at the University of Notre Dame. "The damage that was done to the credibility of the bishops in the course of the revelations last year has not been undone in any degree at all."
Father Andrew Greeley, a Catholic columnist and one of the church's leading authorities on public opinion research, said the National Review Board will probably emerge with its credibility intact, if bruised, simply by doing the job bishops asked it to do. The credibility of the bishops, however, is another matter.
"The board will get out of the present imbroglio by continuing to do its work responsibly, with some quiet. How the bishops get out, I don't know," Greeley said.
Only weeks ago the nation's bishops were looking forward to their meeting in St. Louis as a welcome respite from the crisis atmosphere experienced a year ago in Dallas, when record numbers of reporters descended on the conference at the height of the sexual abuse scandal.
Bishops had hoped to limit their public discussions to a relatively noncontroversial agenda: the training of teachers of catechism and permanent deacons, challenges affecting agriculture and the promotion of collaboration between clergy and women.
There was to be only a brief progress report -- and no news conference afterward.
That has changed. In the aftermath of this week's events, the issue of the bishops' own credibility looms nearly as large as it did in Dallas.
