With such internal matters as elections and budget out of the way, members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops went into regional meetings and executive session Nov. 16 still facing a hefty agenda.

Among the topics scheduled to be debated during the last two days of the Nov. 15-18 fall general meeting in Washington were the first national Catholic catechism intended specifically for adults; several Spanish-language liturgical texts that would formally incorporate important Latin American rituals into U.S. church services; a proposal to join a new national ecumenical association, Christian Churches Together in the USA; a plan to write a pastoral letter on marriage; and follow-up to the bishops' "Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People."

No vote was expected on a report about how bishops should deal with Catholic public officials whose policy stands contradict Catholic teachings on fundamental issues such as abortion.

Much of the first day and a half of the meeting was devoted to the election of new USCCB leadership and approval of plans and priorities guiding the conference's budgetary decisions.

The bishops overwhelmingly approved a series of recommendations aimed at limiting the conference's projects to those mandated by the Vatican or the bishops themselves.

The conference "has taken on too many projects. We try to do too much," said Bishop Donald W. Wuerl of Pittsburgh, chairman of the bishops' Task Force on Activities and Resources, which drafted the recommendations.

On Nov. 15, the bishops approved a $129.4 million budget for 2005 -- 1.8 percent higher than the previous year's budget -- and agreed to create an ad hoc committee to aid the church in Africa, which would collect and distribute contributions to assist the church in Africa, using staff and resources from a handful of offices to manage the effort.

Bishop William S. Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., was elected to a three-year term as the new USCCB president, and Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago was elected vice president.

Bishop Skylstad, who had served as USCCB vice president under Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville, Ill., was to take up his new post at the close of the meeting. (For more on Bishop Skylstad, see www.the-tidings.com.)

Bishop Dennis M. Schnurr of Duluth, Minn., a former USCCB general secretary, was chosen as treasurer-elect, a post he will take up at the close of the November 2005 meeting.

Also elected were two new committee chairmen and 12 chairmen-elect.

Opening the meeting with the traditional president's address, Bishop Gregory called the clergy sex abuse crisis "the greatest scandal that the church in the United States perhaps has ever confronted," but he cited several "very healthy forces" that have resulted from the bishops' handling of the scandal.

Those forces include a proposal to hold a plenary council, an evaluation of how the bishops' meetings themselves work, and a study of how their conference operates and how its expenses might be held down, he said.

"As I look at these three forces at work, I am drawn to conclude that the conference as we know it today is likely to be a much different conference five or 10 years from now," Bishop Gregory added.

Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein of Indianapolis, head of an ad hoc committee formed in 2002 to guide the bishops through a proposal by a group of bishops to convene a national plenary council, reported that there was little support among the bishops for the idea of such a plenary council or another suggested alternative, a U.S. regional synod of bishops.

But in a series of votes Nov. 15, the bishops made clear that they need to spend more time in dialogue and debate among themselves about what they need to do to respond to major issues facing the church across the nation.

The big issues they are concerned about are two generations of disarray in evangelization and catechesis in the U.S. church, declining Catholic participation in the Eucharist and other sacraments during that period, and the dramatic decline in vocations to the priesthood and religious life in the past three decades.

---CNS