c. 2006 Religion News Service

BALTIMORE _ The U.S. Catholic bishops grabbed headlines at their national meeting this week (Nov. 13-16) with controversial documents on homosexuality, contraceptives and Communion.

But it was the bishops’ decision to drastically reduce the size and scope of their national office that will have more consequential _ if somewhat less controversial _ effects, according to some church analysts.

For more than a decade, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has enabled the nation’s 300-odd bishops to adopt national policies, such as guidelines for clergy sexual abuse, and to speak with one voice on issues such as abortion and immigration.

But the bishops agreed to a plan Tuesday (Nov. 14) that will reduce the conference’s committees by half, and staff by one-quarter, by 2011. Dioceses’ contributions to the conference will be cut by $1.9 million, or 16 percent, as part of the fallout from costly sexual abuse claims.

The changes will allow the bishops’ conference to run a tighter, more focused ship, said Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, who chaired a task force on the reorganization.

“There was a sense among many bishops that we were simply attempting to do too much,” Wuerl said in an interview.

Americans can expect fewer statements from the conference on fewer issues, Wuerl said, as the bishops limit their priorities to faith formation, family life, priestly vocations, “pro-life ministry” and cultural diversity.

The cuts signify a marked change from the late 1970s and 1980s, when the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago molded the bishops’ conference into a “high-profile, frequently controversial body,” said Russell Shaw, the bishops’ chief spokesman from 1969 to 1987.

“There’s a lot more at stake here than a routine shuffling of boxes,” Shaw wrote in Crisis, a conservative Catholic journal. The restructuring “will have consequences for American Catholicism for years to come.”

In the debate over the downsizing plan here this week, some bishops worried over those consequences.

Bishop Joseph Kurtz of Knoxville, Tenn., said the bishops’ pro-life committee should not be cut at a time when the nexus of law, medicine and Catholic doctrine is particularly complex. The pro-life committee, which sets national Catholic policy on issues like embryonic stem cell research and abortion, has been allotted 11 staffers but will be reduced to eight.

Kurtz said he was speaking on behalf of the pro-life committee’s chair, Cardinal William Keeler of Baltimore, and made it clear he supports the overall changes.

Still, Kurtz said in an interview that the committee needs experts on staff to “precisely study statements and studies that assist in the development of good laws and good judicial decisions.”

An outside auditor will review the restructuring in 2011.

The cuts will hurt the bishops’ ability to respond to public policy issues as well as efforts at ecumenical dialogue, said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center.

“I think it’s a mistake. You saw bishops (at the national meeting) who said, `How are we going to have dialogue without staff? Telephone calls and letters won’t be responded to,”’ said Reese, who has written widely on the power structure of the U.S. Catholic Church.

While the committee for ecumenical and interreligious affairs had been authorized to have nine staffers, it will have six under the newly adopted restructuring.

Twelve proposals for next year _ including a plan for dialogue among scientists, theologians and bishops, as well as a plan to train missionaries _ have been scuttled under the restructuring, according to the conference’s committee on priorities and plans.

“This will have a long-term effect on the bishops’ conference,” said Reese, of the cuts. “(The conference) will do less and have less expertise at its fingertips.”

KRE/PH END BURKE