BALTIMORE — The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops convened a high-stakes meeting Tuesday under pressure to confront the ever-widening child sexual abuse crisis that has disillusioned many churchgoers.

A key question at the four-day gathering: How willing are the bishops to give lay experts a major role in holding the clergy accountable?

Francesco Cesareo, an academic who chairs a national sex-abuse review board set up by the bishops, told the meeting’s opening session that the involvement of laity is critical if the bishops are to regain public trust after “a period of intense suffering” for the church.

He said the review board “remains uncomfortable with allowing bishops to review allegations against other bishops — this essentially means bishops policing bishops.”

“We find ourselves at a turning point, a critical moment in our history, which will determine in many ways the future vibrancy of the church and whether or not trust in your leadership can be restored,” Cesareo said.

The deliberations will be guided by a new law that Pope Francis issued on May 9. It requires priests and nuns worldwide to report sexual abuse as well as cover-ups by their superiors to church authorities. It also calls for allegations against bishops to be reported to the Vatican and a supervisory bishop.

Among the many agenda items in Baltimore is a proposal to create an independent, third-party entity that would review allegations of abuse. Cesareo says all abuse-related allegations concerning bishops should be reported to civil authorities first and then to a review board.

A national survey released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center illustrates the extent of disenchantment among U.S. Catholics. The March poll found about one-fourth of Catholics saying they had scaled back Mass attendance and reduced donations because of the abuse crisis, and only 36 percent said U.S. bishops had done a good or excellent job in responding.

According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, an authoritative source of Catholic-related data, 45 percent of U.S. Catholics attended Mass at least once a month in 2018, down from 57 percent in 1990.

According to the center’s estimates, there were 76.3 million Catholics in the U.S. last year, down from 81.2 million in 2005.