Seattle Archdiocese Study Set

WASHINGTON — The Vatican, which upset some American bishops by disciplining Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen last year, has asked three of the nation’s most influential Roman Catholic churchmen to take a new look at the situation.

In a brief statement issued through the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Pope John Paul II’s representative to the United States said today that Cardinals Joseph Bernardin of Chicago and John O’Connor of New York and Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco would “assess the current situation in the Archdiocese of Seattle.” Hunthausen was forced by the Vatican last summer to give up some of his authority to a Vatican-appointed auxiliary bishop after being found too liberal in such areas as ministry to homosexuals and the dispensation of absolution for sin to large groups.