BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: John Paul certainly led the Catholic Church a long way in interfaith relations, Chester, but there's still a way to go, isn't there?

Dr. CHESTER GILLIS (Theology Professor and Chair, Department of Theology, Georgetown University): Well, there is. I think he did set a great benchmark in this area; remarkable accomplishments with all of the religions, and particularly with Judaism, but also with Islam, as the piece indicated. But even internal to Christianity there are still tensions, of course, between churches, between Protestants and Catholics, and some of those have long theological history, and sometimes there are disciplinary histories, and sometimes it's just a kind of bickering between them. Also, this pope had hoped to reunite Christianity itself in its divisions with the Orthodox position and the Roman Catholic position. He was unsuccessful with that, although he made heroic efforts to that end, but there are a lot of roadblocks for that. So there's still much work to be done, but he has given a vision of what we should be doing. And he's a person who wanted to engage in interreligious dialogue, which I think is largely the future of religions.

ABERNETHY: What do you mean by that - "largely the future of religions"?

Dr. GILLIS: Well, I think that, I think that it will be difficult, increasingly difficult in the 21st century for religions to live independently of one another. The Church is embedded in cultures in which there are many religions together. Take Asian Catholicism and African Catholicism, for example -- not so much Latin American -- and those people live side by side with peoples of other religions. It's important not simply to tolerate one another, but to understand one another. And to understand one another requires a sympathetic dialogue and a consistent dialogue between religions.

ABERNETHY: But look, Colleen, John Paul II believed deeply in the truth of Catholicism. Now, where, where is there in that, where is there room for respecting what other people, other religions feel is their truth?

COLLEEN CARROLL CAMPBELL (Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center): Well I think that his belief in the "splendor of truth," the title of one of his encyclicals, was not something that impeded his ecumenical efforts, but it was the very reason that they were so successful. He practiced a kind of highest-common-denominator ecumenism which is very different from what we very often see, kind of "I won't talk about my issues, you won't talk about yours." We just hold hands; we kind of ignore the big differences. He completely believed in the gospel of Jesus Christ. He believed that the Catholic Church most fully embodied the fullness of the Christian faith and that that was the way that God intended; but at the same time he could find the common ground and the same moral truths that he believed in Catholic tradition are accessible to everyone through reason -- that dignity of the human person, the sanctity of life.

ABERNETHY: But does that mean that for Protestants, for Jews, for Muslims, that we are sort of second-class citizens?

Ms. CARROLL CAMPBELL: I don't think we got that impression at all from the folks that were interviewed in the piece, and I think it's very important the way he did it. Again, it was based on truth that we could claim as our own and grappling together to come to some understanding of what truth is. Once we say that there is no truth, then it's just your opinion versus mine. I don't think that is charity or compassion. I think it's just a cop-out. And he refused to cop out that way.

ABERNETHY: John-Peter Pham?

Dr. JOHN-PETER PHAM (Professor, James Madison University): I have to respectfully disagree with that comment about -- in many respects, I think to achieve dialogue in this pontificate, certainly the pope is to be applauded for the tremendous strides that have been made in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue. But in certain areas one sees very clearly a pattern of a certain willingness not to engage in difficult issues. The one Islamic representative in this piece that we just saw spoke about all the apologies that were made by John Paul II, but we have yet to hear of anything about the rights of Christians who are driven out of Muslim countries in the Middle East. We really have not yet addressed the question -- and it needs to be addressed in the next pontificate -- about the changing demographic face of Europe. There are some European cities -- I read in one Italian study recently, Rome itself -- where there are more Muslims who attend the mosque on a given weekend than Catholics in churches. So I think there are some issues that were soft-pedaled in the interest of achieving political consensus as well as dialogue consensus, and some of those issues I think will have to be grappled with by the next pontiff.