In this episode of “Inside the Vatican,” host Colleen Dulle interviews Julia McStravog, a senior advisor on the Synod on Synodality at the U.S.C.C.B., to get an inside look into how the U.S. church organized itself to carry out the national and continental phases of the synod, and how those phases inform the ongoing meeting in Rome.

Through the centuries, there have been many disputes between Jesuits and Dominicans. But when the Jesuits are in real trouble, they know they can turn to the Dominicans for help.

Surely the problems facing the modern family, the Amazon, the universal church cannot be boiled down to a single headline.

Julian Paparella, who was 25 years old when he addressed hundreds of bishops in that assembly, joins Zac and Ashley to shed light on the dynamic at work inside synods.

“The synod is not a council. It does not take decisions as a council does. Its task is to discern, not decide,” one synod member explained to me.

As a superior general and then as a bishop, the cardinal said he had attended six previous synods, and this is “the most diverse synod I’ve ever participated in.”