For those looking to develop a better understanding of synodality, Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe’s Listening Together: Meditations on Synodality is an excellent primer. It also includes a number of valuable insights on the modern world, including the following:

We must address the root causes of the ‘tsunami of loneliness’ (and reject the ‘rugged individualism’ that one celebrity US bishop recently promoted):

Acute individualism, the breakdown of the family, ever deeper inequalities, mean that we are afflicted with a tsunami of loneliness.

We must not confuse being childlike and being childish—or ignore the former just to avoid the latter:

We prepare for the kingdom by becoming playful, childlike but not childish. Sometimes we in the Church are afflicted by a dull, joyless seriousness. No wonder people are bored!

Since we are persons, shaped by our relationships, friendship changes us in critical ways:

Each profound friendship brings into existence a dimension of my life and identity that has never existed before. I become someone I have never quite been before.

Young people who are searching for true meaning will be more attracted to the racial way of Christ than a dull, bourgeois substitute:

Young people are not attracted to our faith if we domesticate it, but they may be excited if we are unafraid to present it as the risky embrace of life.

We can find God and beauty on the margins:

Beauty opens our imagination to the transcendent, the homeland for which we long.

God’s beauty is disclosed most radiantly in what seems most ugly. One must go to the places of suffering to glimpse the beauty of God.

Genuine authority and respect for institutions has collapsed. This cannot be fixed by letting a market mentality shape every relationship or turning to dangerous, self-seeking charlatans and autocrats:

Our whole world is suffering a crisis of authority. All institutions have lost authority. Politicians, the law, the press have all felt authority draining away.

The world hungers for voices that will speak with authority about the meaning of our lives. Dangerous voices threaten to fill the vacuum. It is a world powered not by authority but by contracts – even in the family, the university, and the church.

Joy shows that the Kingdom is truly at hand:

Without joy, none of us has any authority at all. No one believes a miserable Christian!