BALTIMORE — The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops convened Tuesday under pressure to confront the sexual abuse crisis that has disillusioned many churchgoers, with one scholar warning: “We find ourselves at a turning point, a critical moment in our history.”

How the bishops confront the problem “will determine in many ways the future vibrancy of the church and whether or not trust in your leadership can be restored,” Francesco Cesareo, an academic who leads a national sex-abuse review board set up by the bishops, said as the four-day gathering began.

Key proposals on the agenda call for compassionate pastoral care for abuse victims, a new abuse reporting system, and a larger role for lay experts in holding bishops accountable. Votes on the proposals are expected Wednesday and Thursday. The deliberations will be guided by a new law that Pope Francis issued May 9. It requires priests and nuns worldwide to report sexual abuse as well as cover-ups by their superiors to church authorities. Advocates for abuse victims have urged the U.S. bishops to go further by requiring that suspicions be reported to police and prosecutors.

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the bishops’ conference and head of the Galveston-Houston Archdiocese, said he is optimistic major progress will be made this week. He commended the pope for laying out some worldwide guidelines for combating abuse while giving leeway for the U.S. bishops to work out the details. Among the agenda items is a proposal to create an independent, third-party entity that would review allegations of abuse.

The bishops will also be voting on a proposal to encourage — but not require — the involvement of lay experts in handling significant abuse allegations.

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.

According to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, an authoritative source of Catholic-related data, 45% of U.S. Catholics attended Mass at least once a month in 2018, down from 57% in 1990. By the center’s estimates, there were 76.3 million Catholics in the U.S. last year, down from 81.2 million in 2005. The church remains the largest denomination in the U.S.

The second-largest denomination in the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention, also opened its national meeting on Tuesday, with an agenda similarly focused on sex abuse. The SBC had 14.8 million members in 2018, down about 192,000 from the previous year.