"The religiously unaffiliated population is not wholly secular. It is wrong to think of them as consisting entirely of non-believers, for example. We know that many, if not most of them say they do believe in God," says Greg Smith, senior researcher at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

"This is not just about the Vatican versus the nuns," says Sister Maureen Fiedler. "This really is about the future of how we interpret the message of the Second Vatican Council."

How close are US Catholic ties to the Vatican going to be in the future? “That’s a question that is definitely up for grabs in this particularly dispute.”

"What are legitimate changes...and what are changes that are really more driven by the secular culture and its values?"

What does it mean to be in the modern world? “Renewal and adaptation—that’s where all of the controversy comes.”

“One of the great gifts of Vatican II was that it sent us back to study what the Gospels were saying.”

"What is a woman religious? If we can come to some clarity as to what a woman religious is in the life of a church, then we can understand the relationships of women religious to the church."

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“Oftentimes in the Christian conservative community we are not expressing love of our fellow-man,” says Jim Daly, president and CEO of Focus on the Family. “We can come across as very harsh, too harsh.”

Benedict is the first pope to resign in 600 years, and experts say his decision highlights how the nature of the papacy has changed.

In the last two conclaves, the cardinals elected “the smartest man in the room,” says Father Tom Reese. “Should they do that again, or should they elect someone who will listen to all the other smart people in the church?”

After Pope Benedict XVI’s surprise announcement that he is resigning, the Roman Catholic Church is preparing for a conclave, where cardinals under the age of 80 will gather to elect his successor. Managing editor Kim Lawton looked at the centuries-old process of selecting the pope.

"There were some bumps in the road" in Pope Benedict's relationship with the Jewish community, says Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, but "they clearly were aberrations in a path that strengthened relations between the Church and the Jewish ...

Sister Maureen Fiedler, host of the public radio program “Interfaith Voices,” asks if lurking among the papal candidates there is “a pope who will look at the human equality of all persons, including men and women.”

"I look forward to seeing who our next Holy Father is and how he is going to move the church into the future,” says Maureen Ferguson, senior policy advisor for the Catholic Association.

Haris Tarin, director of the Washington, DC office of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, says Pope Benedict XVI was outspoken on Syria, preemptive war, human rights abuses, and Middle East peace, and he leaves behind an overall legacy of “quite a positive interaction” between Christians and ...

This Catholic theologian says the church needs a new pope who is a man of the world with pastoral sensitivity, someone who will “walk in the shoes of Peter.”

We spoke with Catholics about their reaction to the news that Pope Benedict will step down at the end of February and what they hope to see in his successor.

Christopher Ruddy, associate professor of historical and systematic theology at the Catholic University in Washington, DC, suggests that the next pope should turn to other bishops around the world to “help him carry the burden of leading the church.”

On the news of his death in Jerusalem on February 10, we reprise excerpts from our 1999 interview with this eminent Jewish philosopher, leader of liberal Orthodoxy, and founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute.