dennism - that quote struck me, too, as a bit of wisdom.  If we now think it is a good idea to "arrive at the truth, step by step, listening to each other," then I think we need to take another look at all those "truths" that earlier popes, including JPII and BXVI, arrived at without "listening to each other."  

In particular, "each other" must now include lay people and especially women, and not just theologians, Canon lawyers, the "ontological changed", and the vowed religious.  The rest of us really live in the world every day, facing a world the rest have removed themselves from, to greater or lesser extent.  Our experience of life is not the same and a religious "truth" that has not grounded in reality is as useful as a rainbow - inspiring, a thing of beauty, but soon gone, and the storms will come again.

No one has "the last word" on anything, despite the insistence of JPII and BXVI and so many others.