“What four things? I can’t tell you right now, but I sure wish we could give four pieces of guidance to the people of God across the world,” the cardinal told Catholic News Service Oct. 4, 2024.

In a message to the people of his archdiocese,  Tobin said synodality — which involves listening to one another and the Holy Spirit and helping every baptized person take responsibility for their role in the church — “is not an end in itself; we’re not pursuing synodality as the ultimate goal.”

Instead, he said, synodality “is a way of carrying out the mission that has been entrusted to us, and is, without a doubt, the responsibility of every baptized person.”

Asked why it is so important to the church now, Tobin said that in the “marvelous mosaic of the North American church, I think synodality is absolutely necessary as an antidote to polarization and division.”

For instance, he said, “it struck me a year or two ago that we as bishops in the United States, in our assemblies, have never been able to speak about any of the exhortations of Pope Francis” — from “Evangelii Gaudium,” or the “Joy of the Gospel,” to “Fratelli Tutti” — when discussing plans and priorities.

“It dawned on me that perhaps we lack that sense of synodality that unlocks those documents and shows us the way forward,” he said. It is important “to listen to others, so that when we propose priorities, we’re actually speaking because we’ve listened to the people.”

Pope Francis set up study groups to delve into several of the topics thousands of people raised in the preparatory process for the synod — topics like women’s role in the church, the procedure for choosing bishops, designing seminary programs to help priests learn to collaborate, ministry to LGBTQ Catholics and relations between bishops and members of religious orders.

While members of the synod heard reports on the study groups’ progress Oct. 2, those topics were not treated in-depth in the working document that will guide synod discussions through Oct. 27.

Tobin said he did not think the topics were “off the table,” but that the study groups were a way “to keep those themes alive” without letting any one of them “capture the whole imagination of the synod, because we are still trying to figure out what a synodal missionary church looks like.”

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© OSV News / Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. 2024 – from CNS Vatican bureau, used with permission

By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service

[Vatican City – CNS] – Catholics cannot have a clear view of the biggest issues impacting the church if they do not listen to the perspectives of Catholics who come from different countries or cultures or have different life experiences than they do, said Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas.

“Perspective is not the enemy of the truth. It’s the normal way of the church. That’s why we have four Gospels,” said Flores, one of nine people Pope Francis chose to serve as president delegates of the Synod of Bishops in 2023 and again this year.

At a news conference Oct. 3, Flores told reporters covering the synod on synodality that the global listening process that preceded last year’s meeting in Rome and the first synod assembly itself were exercises in helping synod members learn to listen to different perspectives.

“The central reality is to be aware that the perspective approaches the same mystery, but from its own context,” he said, and “it’s important for the rest of the body to hear it, not because we have to kind of pay due to that, but because we don’t see as clearly if we don’t hear what the local perspective is.”

“My diocese is very poor,” he told reporters. “It’s on the border between Texas and Mexico. It’s largely bilingual. But there is a voice there of the people that has something to say about how the Lord Jesus shows himself.”

Listening is a discipline, Flores said. “If it were easy for everyone to listen, we would all do it, but obviously we don’t. And so, the synodal reality into the future is a disciplined, patient listening, a perspective that we all need to hear, if we are to get the full picture. But what is the picture? The picture is the face of Christ.”

The work of the synod, he said, is to take all the perspectives that have been offered from listening sessions on a local, diocesan, national and continental level and combine them with what was heard from the synod members at the first assembly and try “to find a cohesive voice,” one which is not that of any particular person or country, but the voice of the church.

“We are searching for the ‘we,'” he said, and “it’s a work in progress.”

Jesuit Father Giacomo Costa, special secretary of the synod, said the goal of last year’s assembly “was to allow all experiences to be heard and to be recognized as a rich blessing of diversity. I remember at the end, after a month, how many people were amazed by the experiences of the church that they would never have imagined.”

The task now, he said, is to “identify convergences, divergences and possibilities.”

As for the issue of recognizing and strengthening the role of women in the church, an issue that was mentioned repeatedly at every stage of the synod consultation and sessions at the Vatican, St. Joseph Sister Maria de los Dolores Palencia Gómez, another synod president delegate, said that “a path is being carved and is already bearing fruit,” although the pace varies by culture and context.

“The gifts of women and their contributions to a synodal church are being recognized more and more,” she said. “We are taking steps, but we have to take even bigger, faster steps, with greater intensity while also taking into account the contexts, respecting the cultures, dialoguing with those cultures and listening to the women themselves.”

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© OSV News / Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. 2024 – from CNS Vatican bureau, used with permission