WASHINGTON -- U.S. Roman Catholic bishops, at their semiannual meeting, are grappling with problems as worldly as the contemporary "culture of violence" and as seemingly insular as the revision of the wording of Mass prayers.
For the bishops, the problems inside the church are only slightly less intractable than those outside, including abortion, the increase in street crime and the recently approved Oregon measure that legalizes physician-assisted suicide.
The bishops today will debate a "Catholic response to violence," a sweeping statement that condemns what they say is increasing hostility shown by Americans toward each other and urges Catholic leaders to try harder to combat that hostility.
They can do that by working through existing parish programs, by working with other churches and by putting greater emphasis on the moral basis for their views, according to the proposed statement.
Throughout the conference, the bishops have worried that conservative victories in last week's congressional elections are part of a tendency to oversimplify solutions to problems such as violence and poverty.
"We've had the concern for many years, now it is is more serious: We are concerned that people are going to resort to quick solutions to solve complex problems," said Baltimore's Auxiliary Bishop John H. Ricard, chairman of the domestic policy committee, which wrote the report.
Calling the statement a "framework for discussion," Bishop Ricard said, "We are hoping to raise the consciousness that we as Catholics can do something in the face of this violence."
The bishops also are considering some revisions -- the first in 25 years -- of the first two segments of a new translation from the Latin of the Sacramentary, the official book of prayers said at Mass. They were to debate a third segment, but that discussion has been delayed.
The changes under consideration this week include the fine-tuning of prayers translated from the Latin after Vatican II; stylistic changes that will make the prayers more easily understood by the congregation; and the addition of some prayers so that they will better reflect the scriptural readings they accompany.
The revisions will probably take several more years for the bishops to complete, said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, who is the author of "Archbishop: Inside the Power Structure of the American Catholic Church."
And even if the revisions are approved at this week's conference of bishops, they will still be subject to approval from an international committee of bishops. "They realize that the liturgy touches the lives of people," he said. "And they're hoping they will last for awhile."