St. Louis ? America’s Roman Catholic bishops face a critical six months ahead in which a series of reports will either support their claim that sex abuse reforms are on track or provide ammunition to their increasingly vocal critics.

“The bishops are more hopeful. I think we feel more confident. I think we’re beginning to get a handle on it,” Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in a weekend interview as the group’s semiannual meeting adjourned.

The bishops’ future credibility in the eyes of the U.S. laity — 66.4 million strong — will depend heavily on the National Review Board, an independent monitoring panel of prominent lay Catholics, and two investigations the board is supervising: a statistical survey of abuse cases and an audit of how each U.S. diocese is complying with reform policies.

The board plans to issue a progress report to the Catholic population after its next meeting, July 28-29 in Chicago.

Around the end of the year, the board also will produce a major document on the causes of the sex abuse crisis that has roiled the church for the past year and a half.

The crisis began last year with evidence that church leaders in Boston had shuffled abusive priests from parish to parish rather than remove them. Since then, at least 325 U.S. priests have resigned or been dismissed from their duties.