Bishops' message overshadowed.

Byline: The Washington Post WASHINGTON - As the United States moved toward a possible war with Iraq, the leaders of America's largest religious denomination this week questioned the ethical grounds for a pre-emptive attack. Yet the statement by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was all but drowned out by the church's sex abuse scandal.

It was a matter of deep frustration among the approximately 280 Roman Catholic bishops who gathered in Washington that, at a time when the country might have looked to them for moral guidance, they were struggling to regain their moral credibility instead.

``Everything else we say and do is now seen through the prism of the sex scandal,'' lamented Cardinal Francis George of Chicago. ``But we're going to continue to say and do it, because that's what the church does.''

In their three-page statement, the bishops outlined the traditional Christian criteria for a ``just war'' and said they feared the Bush administration hadn't met those conditions.

``Based on the facts that are known to us, we continue to find it difficult to justify the resort to war against Iraq, lacking clear and adequate evidence of an imminent attack of a grave nature,'' they wrote.

Some bishops had argued for a sharper warning against unilateral military action. Others had wanted to ``acknowledge at least the difficulties the president is taking care of,'' in the words of Archbishop Philip Hannan, a former military chaplain and retired head of the archdiocese of New Orleans. But the most common concern after the 228-14 vote on Wednesday was whether anyone was listening.

``I think we've lost the very strong voice that we had before,'' said the Most Rev. Richard Garcia, auxiliary bishop of Sacramento.

``Of course the bishops feel the loss of their status to speak on these issues. We all feel it,'' said the Rev. Canice Connors, president of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, which unites the Jesuits, Franciscans and other religious orders. ``That's the big loss from this scandal.''

Susan Archibald, president of the Linkup, a nationwide support group of about 3,000 victims of clerical sex abuse, said that as a Catholic, she, too, wants the church to have a strong voice on social justice issues.

But Archibald said she can't stand to hear bishops ``complaining that people just pay attention to the scandal.''

``It really sums up the arrogance of the bishops that they think the church does so many good things that the fact that a few people are abused shouldn't matter so much,'' she said.

During the bishops' four-day meeting, which ended Thursday, they also issued statements on domestic violence, the treatment of Mexican immigrants, the persistence of poverty and the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. Yet most of their energy went into revisions sought by the Vatican to the sexual abuse policy they passed last summer in Dallas.

``I understand why we have to spend so much time on this, and I understand the media's focus on it,'' said Bishop Matthew Clark of Rochester, N.Y. ``But it's a shame that so many other issues of importance have to be put in abeyance.''